Homemade Bread: Cheap, Delicious, Healthy, and Easier Than You Think

Over the last year, I’ve gradually moved more and more towards making my own food at home. There are several reasons for this: it tastes better, it reduces preservative intake, it’s more nutritious, and it’s often substantially cheaper than what you find in the store. It does take time, but once you get used to it, most food preparation doesn’t take much more time than going to the store, buying it, taking it home, popping it out of the package, and following the directions.

Breadmaking is a prime example of this phenomenon. Homemade bread is substantially tastier than store-purchased bread, isn’t laden with preservatives, is very inexpensive to make, and doesn’t take all that much time, either.

The Problems With Industrial Bread

Most people in the United States today view the bread purchased at the supermarket as what bread should be. The actual truth is that the bread you buy in the supermarket has the texture and substance that it has for one reason and one reason alone: so that it can be made on an industrial scale and not grow “old” on the shelf at your supermarket.

There are two big explanations for this. The industrial scale process is designed to maximize profit while still producing an edible loaf of bread on the table. This is done by using an excessive amount of yeast in order to create lots of air bubbles in the bread, hence the “light” texture of store-purchased bread. It also allows for the use of lower-quality grains because of this yeast abundance, thus the bread is far from nutrient-rich. In the United States, most recipes are trade secrets, but in the United Kingdom, the standard recipe, known as the Chorleywood Bread Process, is widely known. The goal of this process is to make a loaf of bread as cheaply as possible, foregoing flavor, nutrition, and texture along the way.

The other bothersome part of industrial breadmaking is the appearance of a healthy dose of preservatives. These preservatives are there solely to extend the shelf life of the bread, again reducing costs for the manufacturer. Every time you eat a piece of store-purchased bread, you’re getting a healthy dose of preservatives with each bite.

Take a look at the ingredient list from a loaf of Home Pride butter top honey wheat bread, a fairly standard store-purchased loaf in my area. I bolded some of the ingredients.

How to Make Your Own Tasty Homemade Bread, Easily and Cheaply

What I’ve found is that many people are simply intimidated by the seemingly complex and work-intensive process of making bread. It seems difficult and loaded with steps and significant work.

In fact, bread is quite easy to make at home, and you only need a few staple ingredients to make a simple loaf. Here’s exactly how to make a delicious loaf at home from scratch.

What you see on the table there is every ingredient and piece of equipment that you need to make a loaf of bread (except the oven). Nothing complicated at all, just basic ingredients that you can often get very inexpensively at your local grocery store. In fact, the ingredients on that table (except for the yeast) is enough to make several loaves of bread.

Here’s the equipment you need…One large mixing bowl A second one is useful, but optional – you can get by with one if you’re willing to wash it in the middle of the process.One spoon You need a spoon to stir the dough.One measuring cup A 1/4 or 1/2 cup measuring cup will do the job.One measuring spoon A one-teaspoon measurer will be just perfect.One bread pan Obviously, to bake the bread in.One hand towel This is just to cover the bread dough as it rises so it doesn’t get drafts or dust or anything on it.

That’s all you need, and it’s all stuff that’s pretty common in most kitchens.

That’s all you need for homemade bread, period. These items are pretty basic so check your grocery store circular and look for online coupons (we update our coupon finder daily) to see if you can find these items on sale or discounted bulk. There are some neat things you can do with added ingredients, which I’ll talk about later, but all you need is that stuff. Nothing complicated or “secret” or confusing at all.

Ordinarily when baking bread, I would mix the dough with my KitchenAid stand mixer, but making bread is easy enough that this is just a convenience, not a requirement by any means. Basically, instead of doing the kneading and stirring described below, I just flip a switch and this machine does it for me.

OK, let’s get started. First, you should warm up the bowl – the best way to do that is to just fill it with hot water, then dump out the hot water, leaving the bowl rather warm. Then, mix up the yeast according to the directions on the packet. Usually, it will say something along the lines of “add a cup of warm water to the yeast and stir.” What you’ll end up with is some tan-colored water with some bubbles in it, as shown above. You should stir this until there are no lumps in the yeast.

Melt the butter in the microwave, then add it, the milk, the sugar, and the salt to the yeast liquid and stir it up until everything looks the same (a very light tan liquid). Then add two cups of flour to the mix – don’t add the rest yet. Your bowl should look something like what’s shown above, where I have the spoon on board ready to stir.

Start stirring, and then add the flour about 1/4 cup at a time every minute or so. It will stick to the spoon big time at first – don’t worry about it. Keep stirring and adding flour until the dough is still slightly sticky, but it doesn’t stick to your hands in any significant way. Also, it should largely clean the sides of the bowl, leaving just a thin layer of floury stuff. It’ll look something like the above.

Now comes the fun part: kneading. Take a bit of flour between your hands and then rub them together over the top of an area on the table where you’re going to knead the dough. Do this a few times until there’s an area on the table lightly covered in flour. Then grab the dough ball out of the bowl, slap it down on the table, and start beating on it. Do this for ten minutes. Just take the dough, punch it flat, then fold it back up into a ball again, and repeat several times. I also like to take it in my hands and squeeze and twist it.

When the ten minutes are up, shape it into a ball (like shown above), then either clean up the bowl you were using before or get out another bowl. Either coat the inside lightly with corn starch or nonstick cooking spray, depending on your preference, then put the ball of dough inside the bowl.

Put a cloth over the bowl and sit it somewhere fairly warm for an hour. If you have a warming area on your stove top, that’s a great place to put it – set the warming area on as low as it will go, as I’m doing in the picture above. This is a good time to clean everything else and put the stuff away, but leave the flour out and the floured area on your table untouched.

Here’s what the dough looks like before rising…

… and then an hour later after rising, still in the bowl…

It should be roughly double the size that it was before, but don’t sweat it too much if it’s larger or smaller than that, as long as it rose at least some amount. Punch the dough down (three or four good whacks will cause it to shrink back down to normal), then lay the dough out on the floured area and spread it out in a rectangle shape, with one side being roughly the length of the bread pan and the other side being about a bread pan and a half long.

You may need to put a bit more flour on it and on the table to prevent sticking. Then, roll it up! The roll should be roughly the same size as the bread pan, as shown below.

Tuck the ends of the roll underneath, with the “under” side being where the seam is. Then spray the bread pan down with nonstick cooking spray (or coat it with cornmeal) and put the loaf inside of the pan.

Cover that loaf up with the towel, put it back where it was before, and wait another hour. This is a good time to clean everything up, then go do something else fun. The loaf should raise some more:

Put that loaf in the oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit (200 degrees Celsius) for thirty minutes. When it’s done, pull it out and immediately remove it from the pan to cool. It’ll look something like this, hopefully.

Let it cool down completely before slicing.

This bread will make mind-blowing toast. Seriously, pop a slice in the toaster, get it golden brown, and spread a bit of butter or margarine on it. Truly, truly sublime.

On Beyond the Basic White Loaf

If you get into making your own bread (and why not? It’s inexpensive, tasty, and healthy), you’ll eventually want to start experimenting. Here are some tips I’ve learned over the last year or so.

Bread-making Tips I’ve Learned

Different flours work differently. If you try making a rye bread or a whole wheat bread, you’ll discover the flour has different properties. Just stick with adding it slowly to the bowl until it’s just barely not sticking to your hands, and you’ll be fine. Whole wheat flour, for instance, generally requires about half a cup less flour than white flour to reach the right point.

For a delicious Italian bread, replace the salt with garlic salt and before you start stirring, add in some Italian seasonings, like oregano and rosemary – or an Italian seasoning mix.

You can easily double this recipe and make two loaves at once. The time investment is virtually the same and you get twice the bread.

Eventually, you’ll start really experimenting. Making pizza dough from scratch is similarly easy, as are cinnamon rolls. I’ve reached the point where I feel confident making most bread recipes in the oven (except for sourdough loaves, which always seem to turn out wrong).

What’s the take home? Baking homemade bread is a very worthwhile thing to try. It’s inexpensive, healthy, and teaches you a lot about how to cook at home. Best of all (for me, anyway), it makes mindblowingly good toast – I love to start off my day with a slice of toast made from homemade bread and a cup of tea.

Thanks, Trent! I’ll try this tonight. I was disgusted this morning when I looked at my shelf. I’d bought a loaf of commercial bread 2 months ago and hadn’t eaten it. It’s not moldy. Quite the contrary. It still looks and smells and feels like it did 2 months ago when I bought it. I can only imagine what a prodigious amount of preservatives were pumped into it to keep it in stasis like that.

Nice job. We’re big homemade bread fans in our household. It’s a fun activity. We do try to mix it up – apple and walnut bread, soda bread, wholewheat bread – because frankly, if we only made yeasty bread every week, I’d never eat anything else!

Your posts are so descriptive and detailed, just awesome. My family buys a lot of bread so this would be awesome if I can make my bread look like that. I’m definitely going to try this for thanksgiving. I’m also attempting a turkey, can you do a writeup on frugal turkey preparation? :)

Trent – we are on the same wavelength – I am eating a slice this very minute, just out of the oven (yeah, it kind of ruins the loaf to cut it when it’s so hot, but I couldn’t help it). Yum! My usual recipe is about half unbleached white flour, and the other half 3:1 whole wheat & rye (no carraway). I make 4 loaves for the week, most Sundays. The KitchenAid machine rocks!

My bread is cheaper than the artisanal loaves at the bakery. There are a thousand ways to make bread–when it’s fresh and warm it’ll beat anything you can buy. I’ve been making bread off and on for years. These days, I usually stick to the Big 4 ingredients: flour (mostly whole grains), water, salt, and leavening (usually sourdough starter).

I love baking my own bread. I buy one store bread (because my family has been duped into thinking this is the only kind of bread), and if we need more bread that week I make some. Saves a trip to the store and I am slowly converting them. Speaking of varieties of bread – I’m hungry for chocolate bread now.

Trent if you are buying the separate packages of yeast you are paying much more to make your great looking bread than is necessary. If you have a GFS or BJ’s, Sam’s or Costco around, you can get a whole POUND of yeast for $2.99. It comes in a package that feels like a brick but is in fact the same yeast in those little packets. Keep some of it the freezer and some in the fridge. Also you could simplify the dough making process up considerably my using a cheap breadmaker on the dough cycle. After the machine has done it’s magic all you have to do is punch it down and let it have it’s second rise.Then bake!

I’ve made my own bread many times and love it just like everyone else. My only complaint is that the loaf gets nearly rock hard in only about a days time even if I ziploc it and wrap it up. Now I know this is due to the lack of preservatives, but I was just wondering if anyone had tips for longer periods of freshness.

How long does a loaf last?? Andy said his gets hard after a day…seems like alot of work for very little time to eat it. As a single, busy student and professional, I need to find food that 1) minimizes cost and time, 2) maximizes health, and 3) isn’t in huge portions (only one mouth to feed–my own). this pretty much eliminates most cooking recipes, is hard to do, and means I get alot of cheap veggie takeout and “healthy” frozen dinners. …most of my bread gets thrown out ’cause I can’t eat the whole loaf before it goes stale (usually 2 weeks), and the bread I get from the deli doesn’t freeze well.

Beautiful! I love to make bread, and my method is very similar to yours.

One of my fondest childhood memories is making bread with my Mom. She used to let me take out my frustrations during the kneading process – I was allowed to pretend that the dough was the neighbourhood bully, and she encouraged me to wail away, punching with my tiny little four year old fists. It was highly therapeutic.

As a side note .. it’s blasphemous to use anything but real butter on homemade bread. :)

Does anyone know where to get cheap yeast in NYC? We have no Sam’s, Costco, BJ’s or GFS (whatever those last 2 are). I love the taste of homemade bread, and the process of making it, but in the city, the costs are actually prohibitive. Yeast is the main problem.

Also, Sense and Andy make a good point–how long does a loaf last? Since we make bread infrequently, my family tends to gobble up a homemade loaf in a day or 2. If we were to make it regularly, though, I’d like to know if it would last longer (without having to freeze).

Imelda, unless you are short on freezer space, that is actually a good option. If you let it cool completely and then slice it before freezing, it is so handy to be able to get out a few slices. It thaws so quickly that it isn’t a problem to make sandwiches with it, and it tastes very fresh and wonderful. One just doesn’t want to store it in the freezer for months. Ours is only in there for a week, tops. My grandmother used to cut hers with an electric knife (where did that knife go, I wonder?). And if you can’t find bulk yeast in the city I will have to bring you some the next time I come down!

Although I used to omit sugar and fat in my bread, I recently read in one of the King Arthur Flour cookbooks that those ingredients are important for the development of the dough. Honey and olive oil seem to prolong the freshness of the loaf a bit. Haven’t tried milk lately, Diane – good idea.

Trent, you need a way to subscribe to comments on an individual posts. There are a lot of times that I want to continue reading what others have to say and would love for the comments to be in my RSS feed.

Great post! I have been making my own bread for about a year now and have to say that it tastes so much better than the commercial stuff, is healthier for you, and you can make whatever kind you like. From sourdough or wheat to dill or rye bread, you can make the bread match the type of sandwich. Not to mention it is dirt cheap.

If the link doesn’t work, just search for “No Knead Bread”. Very little yeast, but a long rise time. Would work great for people who work days and can’t spend 2-3 hours in the evening for bread to rise.

Sounds good to me. I actually found this other recipe in a forum, claiming to be made for 11 cents a loaf. I assume you can make it without a bread machine as well. Its long and I haven’t made it, but here it is:

“Here is the recipe for a two pound loaf that all who try it state that it is the best of the best!
I CAN MAKE THIS FOR $.11/LOAF!
This is our favorite bread recipe for several years running. It never gets tiring.
I made a loaf last night and it is over half gone. About a whole nickel’s worth.

1¾ – t. dry yeast (I get it from Sam’s or Costco in the 2-lb. size and refrigerate it for year(s)) Might also be possible to use the yeast packets but they’d be more expensive.

Press the standard (default) bake button and let ‘er rip.

1. Note — on my machine (an Oster model 5821), it is necessary to scrape the small clumps of flour from the sides of the pan about 3 – 4 minutes into the start of the first mix cycle.
2. Note — for a softer crust, this loaf must sit undisturbed for about a three hour cool-down after the normal finish of the baking and cool-down cycle of the machine. I’ve even left it for several hours (like ’till you get home from work or overnight).
3. Note — this makes the world’s best toast.
4. Note — please don’t use margarine on this bread/toast – use Land ‘O Lakes butter, or it’s equivalent.

I call this my whole-wheat-light bread recipe and by default, it uses the normal white-bread bake cycle.”

Further to Stu’s comment about differences in American and Australian breads, I was amaezed at all the extra artificial horrors in American bread – especially all the added sugars: high fructose corn syrup or sugar, molasses, maltodextrin, honey, corn syrup. Not only are the grains in bread highly processed carbs, which mess up your insulin levels and get converted to fat, even moreso are sugars!

Even though there is less crap in there, still we have undeirable things like canola oil and that ubiquitous waste-product, soy, with its female-hormone-disrupting and thyroid-attacking properties.

If you don’t have time to make your own, try looking in organic health food or organic greengrocers’ shops – in Sydney you can buy fresh bread with only 4 or 5 ingredients in it (and all are recognisable).

Ideally, for our health we should *minimise* the amount of grains and cereals we eat. The FDA food pyramid recommending we max out on breads and pastas etc has made a wonderful contribution towards increasing obesity, diabetes and heart disease levels over the last several decades. The sugar-plus-grain combination is not a healthy food combination at all, yet appears at breakfast in packaged cereals, morning tea in biscuits, lunch with bread, and dinner (perhaps a pasta dish with a sugar-enhanced sauce).

Probably home-style sourdough and dark rye breads made from non-refined, simple organic ingredients are the best breads, but nevertheless should not form a major part of the diet.

Hey man thanks for the tips, I’m definitely going to try this this weekend.

I wonder though, how would you go about doing garlic loaves? I’ve had bread thats had whole garlic cloves in the bread. Do you think I should roast the garlic in advance or just pop the cloves into the dough?

The thing about bread machines is that you have to get your quantities just right.

That means measuring the liquids carefully, but most importantly you should *weigh* your flour rather than trying to use a measuring cup.

If you do that, you can get incredible bread from a bread machine. Prep time is 5-10 minutes, depending on whether you keep your ingredients all in the same place.

When you shop for a machine, shop based on the recipe book. I have a Cuisinart model that has recipes for dozens of types of bread, cinnamon rolls, baguettes, and various other doughs. I can’t stand store-bought bread anymore!

I second the rec for the NY Times recipe for the No-Knead Bread- it is fantastic and simple. The laugh is on us because for years we bought these same loaves from Sullivan St. Bakery when we lived in NYC. Now we make them at home for pennies.

I don’t want to say this recipe is foolproof, but we’ve messed up the times and the kneading etc. and still come out with amazing bread.

I just recently found this out, but the best way to preserve bread, if you’ve sliced it already, is to keep it in the freezer. The trick is that if it’s sliced, you can usually pull off the two or four slices you need, and leave the rest in the freezer. Slices of frozen bread defrost super fast just by leaving it on the cutting board at room temp. Freezing the bread works much better than keeping it in the fridge. In the fridge, bread just dries out and ends up tasting nasty. I’ve used this trick with both store bought bread, and high end artisan bread with great effect.

Excellent post – this is clearly one of your ten super articles of November.

I’m not sure if Plonkee above was making a criticism of this article being too much like a cooking blog (apologies if that wasn’t the intention) but I think ‘going deeper’ on your general tips and ideas is the way forward – this one really made me sit up and pay attention. Once I’ve moved house (2 weeks) I’m going to give this a go.

I made bread couple of times. It’s fun activity for sure and the effort is well worth it.
The bread at times went hayway i.e. brick bread. But i had modified it by slicing it and put some cheese,veggies and bake it again … sold like hot cakes.
Thanks for the Nice walk through in bread making.

I recommend getting a breadmaker to save yourselves a ton of time and effort. Sunbeam makes a great model that you can get for around $40 and it makes all sorts of breads for you. Same ingredients. I do recommend not using as much butter and sugar though, especially if you’re concerned about health. You can also use powdered milk instead of real milk which really doesn’t impact flavor in my eyes.

Be careful with the yeast and make sure you cook a loaf well. My girlfriend and I got a bad case of Thrush after eating some over moist home made bread once. Thrush = yeast infection of the mouth. Pretty nasty.

I will chime in to second the no-knead method, referred to by A. R. Rhoads. It is far simpler than the method described here and produces a round artisanal style loaf, as opposed to the squared, sandwich loaf Trent makes. It is so easy a six-year-old could make it.

Go to breadtopia.com for the details, the recipes and great instructional videos.

For the record, when I make a medium-sized no-knead loaf with all organic ingredients, my materials cost is 94 cents. And it’s better than anything I can get from the local markets in my area.

Couldn’t one prepare just the dough in advance, and freeze the dough until ready to cook? This way,for those with time challenges, or whose family may go through a large quantity of bread, they could have a jump on the process.
As I recall, you would normally freeze the dough after the first rise and punch cycle, defrost the dough when needed, then allow it to rise again before baking.
Just curious, but not certain (memories fade, LOL!)

Hi John Luckich, Fresh bread with no preservatives would probably last a few days, maybe 3 before getting moldy. I’m not sure because I don’t make it any more, I live alone and it would spoil (although I would LOVE to make fresh bread). It will grow mold quicker in the summer or stored in a hot/humid place.

Storing it in the refrigerator, in a sealed container, will make it last much longer. You could also freeze it. Actually, you could freeze the dough in loaf-size portions. This would actually align with Trent’s feat to make a 50 meals in advance.

There’s nothing better than home made bread. The only thing better is home made jam to go with it. Some people just don’t know how to live! There’s nothing healthy about white flour, sugar, or butter? Well, I beg to differ. Flour: healthy compared to what? How many people in the US alone are raised on refined flour? We only hear the negative aspects of things.

It’s not healthy to eat a ton of sugar but some is needed in the diet to BE healthy. EVERY thing in moderation. That’s all. Balance is the key to good health. Butter is not evil either. Fat is also needed in the diet. If you don’t eat 6 big macs in one sitting, then you can afford to eat some butter.
You ever read the nutrition facts? Butter has vitamin A in it’s active form. It is more readily used than other sources. So, yeah, there’s nothing wrong with eating some butter, just not the whole stick. Why single butter out? Margarine a.k.a trans fats, partially/hydrogenated oil is probably worse.

We have a bread machine from Oster and would never go back to store bought bread. We can use the machine to bake as well, but we generally just use it to knead the bread, finding that the shape/size of the bread wasn’t to our liking as much as a loaf baked in a pan in our oven. We have also started making our own pizza dough and that’s become a dinner staple (we make a pizza at least every week and a half now). One great bread that we’ve made is onion soup mix bread (the recipe was included with the machine). Basically, use a little less salt, add about half a package of the onion soup mix (we save the rest in a ziplock for a later loaf or brush it on top with melted butter just before popping it into the oven).

I tried making bread by hand, but it comes out like rocks. You could use my bread rolls to replace baseballs. My friend gave me her bread maker – because she couldn’t use it without eating the cooked bread in one sitting. I avoid that by letting the bread cool, then slicing it and putting it in a bag the freezer (with some separator plastic between the slices).

To heat a bowl up – put a little bit of cold water in the bottom, and microwave the bowl for a minute. Tip the little bit of water out – or use it with the yeast – if it’s cool enough. To use hot running water to heat bowls will waste about 5 to 10 litres or more, and we’re on water restrictions.

Trent,
I’m glad I got to see the infamous Kitchen-Aid mixer. I’m traveling throughout Texas & California until this Sunday… but when this girl returns to Georgia, I’m definitely going to make some dough! :)
Have a good one,
Iris

Try getting Bernard Claytons, “Complete Book of Breads.” Not only is it a wonderful cookbook, he has a lot of history and explanation in there about different kinds of bread. We bought it and make a different recipe every week when friends come for dinner, then we “rate” the recipe (1-5 stars). I’ve had a blast making the breads and everyone else is enjoying eating the bread.

I think an electric knife is essential, as well as a bread slicer guide (Google “bread slicer guide” for several examples). Cutting the bread is the hardest part. Both of these items, as well as breadmakers, can be found a a thrift store for next to nothing. I also think that everyone should have a KitchenAid mixer. They rock.

Even if you can’t get the really big packs of yeast, there should be jars of yeast right beside the individually packaged yeast. That is cheaper. Keep it in your fridge. The jar will tell you how much yeast equals one packet. It is slightly different depending on whether you have regular yeast or quick rise yeast or bread machine yeast.

I’ve been making the bread for my family (2 parents, 2 kids) for about 6 months or so now. I make four loves at a time, and that lasts about a week and a half, so it seems we’ve been eating a lot more bread since I started making it. We keep them in the freezer until needed, so we always have fresh bread. We use it mostly for lunches, so it’s nice knowing the family is having a nutrition lunch, and I hope they think about me when they are eating the real bread.

We started this as a money saving venture as well. However, no one in the family likes store bought sandwich bread any more, and the price for good bread now seems shockingly high. I can’t bring myself to by it.

I also make cookies every week for the kids’ lunches. Again, I started that to save money, but now I can’t imagine giving them the kind of store bought junk we used to give them.

I have to also chime in on the NY Times recipe that has been mentioned in the comments above. It produces a different kind of loaf than the one described on this site – it’s a crusty, chewy, artisan-type loaf. Amazingly easy and amazingly good. Every person that I’ve served the bread to asks for the recipe and every one of them has passed it on to friends. It’s easy to amend too. Onion/rosemary, calamata olive, garlic, cheese, cracked pepper and sea salt are a few that I’ve tried with success. You never knew you could make bread this good. Try it!

Your post comes at a perfect time for me. I tried to make bread a few years ago and it didn’t rise, leaving me with heavy, clammy, chewy cooked dough. Last month was the first time I successfully made yeast bread and now I’m hooked!

Frugality was actually behind my previous bread failures: I keep the house quite cool in fall and winter — about 62 degrees this week — which is too cold for bread to rise. Silly me didn’t realize that “warm” to me isn’t “warm” to yeast. So, I heat the oven to 200 degrees F, turning it off as soon as it reaches that temperature. For the first rise cycle, I put the bread inside, under a cloth towel, and leave the oven door ajar. For the second rising, I put a cookie sheet full of near-boiling water on the bottom rack of the oven, put the bread on a rack above it, then shut the door. The warmth and humidity from the water is perfect.

Strong bread flour is the best too use, if its available in The US get one with a type “00” rating which refers to it high gluten contenet. you should be able to find it in most good Italian Deli`s its often used for making pasta and in france is used for making The french stick aka baguette and gives a lovelly crust this is due to the high Gluten content in the flour, gluten gives the dough it elasticity.

Another tip to tell if the bread is cooked is when it comes out of the oven tap it with you hand on the bottom if it makes a nice hollow sound you know it is done if not you will find out its not cooked all the way through.

really…all you need is flour, honey or sugar (but that’s not mandatory), water, salt, oil and yeast and the truth is, you don’t even need the yeast. there is yeast in the air so if you have the time, you can make your own yeast. takes about a week of feeding and encouraging. or you can take a piece of bread (any yeast bread will do), make a slurry by soaking it in water and start feeding it with flour and a little sugar or honey.

I love baking bread. I was always a good baker but couldn’t wrap my head around yeast breads, particularly having failed miserably many many times with those awful boxed pizza mixes of years past. maybe the yeast in them wasn’t fresh or maybe they were simply made to fail, but for the life of me, breads terrified me.

then I decided to give it a shot after watching some mad bread making monk on a tv show in California. And it’s been all joyful calories and carbs ever since. I’ve even won awards for my breads. (so take that, pizza mix b*****ds!)

there is NOTHING you can’t make with a basic bread recipe, from breadsticks to cinnamon buns to pizza and foccacia.

but the number one trick to making bread is using old raw dough, sometimes called sponge, polish, slurry depending on the texture and how long you let it ferment. so save a little piece of yesterdays or last weeks dough (put it in the freezer until you use it or in a container and after a couple of days FEED it…dont’ let it over ferment, which it will). you will make bread that is truly manna.

Does anyone have a good bread machine recipe?? When I do mine it comes out good when it’s hot but gets hard very quickly and I can cook it on the lightest cycle and it still comes out pretty dark. Any suggestions? I haven’t done any homemade breads or things due to frustration, but I love to bake and cook, especially organically.thanks!

I am in Arizona and tried to make bread this summer. I followed a recipe similiar to this and it seemed that the dough over expanded. I followed the time schedule for rising and ended up having to split the loaf in half to make it fit into the bread pans. so my questions are:
a. does it do something to the dough and yeast if you split it in half after it has risen?
b. shoud I change the amount of yeast or rising time?
thanks.

Now, just for fairness, will you put a list with all the pesticides and other unhealthy ingredients that are present in milk and butter, and about the “terrible dangers” of sugar? Sure, homebread is easy and cheap, but the health dangers of all the ingredients you post, in the amounts that are present in bread, are far overblown. But IF your reasons for making homemade bread are health and money saving, I would advise to just use whole wheat flour, yeast, salt and water. Sourdough would be better, but then you lose the “easy” part. There are many recipes for easy whole wheat bread on the internet.

I’m not sure I would do so well making bread at home. The last thing I tried baking at home was chocolate chip cookies. Because of the way the dough spread itself out, it came out of the oven as one huge cookie, which was hilarious.

Homemade bread is the greatest! I never buy bread. I am a pastry chef, and I make all of my our bread products, bread, cinnamon rolls, even english muffins! Have you ever tried MONTANA SAPPHIRE unbleached flour? Its terrific for baking. Great creamy white color, makes great bread and even cookies too. Always make sure you buy flour that has no BROMATE. Potassium bromate is an additive to make flour have better baking characteristics. (Also outlawed in europe and california as a possible carcinogen) I have weaned my family off of white bread and onto 100% whole wheat (ww) bread. I started using some white whole wheat flour (www flour) in place of some of the sapphire flour in my bread recipes. I increased the amount of www flour until it was ALL www flour. They didnt know they were eating 100% whole wheat bread! Then I started substituting brown whole wheat flour (ww flour) (the kind you are used to seeing) in the same way. Now they like it and wouldnt eat anything else! (white whole wheat flour is made from a different strain of wheat that has a lighter color husk, kernel and germ. It has all of the benefits of whole wheat flour, but is lighter in color and gives a lighter texture bread)
I like to use water and not milk in my recipes. But I use dry milk added in with the flour. The yeast jumps faster this way. I also like to add an egg or 2 for each loaf, it helps with the shelf life, so I can make larger batches and keep it longer. A touch of honey also helps to keep moisture. (sugar is hygroscopic, meaning it attracts moisture,[thats why sugar lumps] and honey is a liquid sugar, so it attracts sugar even faster) I also recommend a second rising and punch down before shaping. It will develope more flavor and a nicer texture. Be careful of how warm of a place you put the dough to rise, if too warm, your bread will develope a ‘yeasty’ taste to it. (although thats what I remember from my childhood) a cooler rise takes longer, but the longer and slower the rise, the more flavor that will develope! Happy Baking! :-p

I, too, enjoy making my own bread. As to how long it can last, I can add this anecdote. I once made two loaves of 7 grain bread. We ate one immediately, and the other was wrapped tightly and stored in the freezer. Ultimately, we forgot about it, and there it stayed for about 4 months. We took it out for a camping trip, and it thawed via a 12 hour drive. When we arrived at our site and met our friends, we brought out the bread, which was in excellent condition, all things considered. It wasn’t quite as moist as it would have been had we not forgotten it, but it certainly wasn’t dry. It received rave reviews from our friends. I love homemade bread. Maybe I’ll make some tonight…

I got rid of my breadmaker and don’t regret it. Just another thing that cluttered my kitchen, and I hated the taste, shape and feel of the loaf that came out of it. I wasn’t happy with just using it to mix the dough either. Besides, with practice, it now takes me less than 10 minutes to create the dough and set it aside for the rising.

Not to mention the kneading of the dough is part of the joy (unless you get no enjoyment out of this process.)

I use whole-wheat bread flour (King Arthur brand)which I can find in my local Savemart grocery store. So remember you are not limited to white bread flour only.

I also have the “No need to Knead” cookbook, which has great recipes. I forget the name of the author.

Something else to try if you want a relatively quick, and *very* simple loaf, is beer bread. Basically, beer supplies the liquid, yeast, and some flavoring. I don’t drink beer (can’t stand it, actually), but I really like beer bread.
It can be a bit strong, so on a whim, I tried adding peanut butter. It mellowed it out, and gave it a nutty (duh) taste.
There are about a zillion recipes for beer bread. Google is your friend.

EP- Add some firebricks to your oven to help even out the temperature. Firebrick tile are way cheaper then a pizza stone and really up the thermal properties of even a lousy oven. You’ve got to let the oven pre-heat a bit longer 20 min or so but they really help.

We gave away or bread machine to some friends once we got the Kitchenaid as it is way better for bred making then the dedicated machine.

I find that baking my own bread is a real relaxing, zen like experiece. Even those that have bread machines should try making it by hand once in a while. Best to start with a simple white flour bread, then after you’ve made a few loaves (and hopefully learned if you’ve made a few bricks!), you can try some really cool bread that you’ll never find in a store. One of my favorites is honey wheat (google for recipe, I’m certain there are many good ones). I also like doing dark ryes. All economic, stress relief and preservative-free reasons aside, home-made bread makes an awesome holiday gift.

I grind my own flour using an attachment on the Kitchen-Aid using organic seed bought through the net. The flour is not as finely ground as store bought is, making it a heavier loaf but the taste is just awesome. I know I’m somewhat extreme for the people attracted to your simple loaf of bread but wanted to throw in my $0.02 for those of you who are more adventurous. Oh, sourdough is my favourite.

I come from Poland, country where bread is still the most important (except potatoes) part of eating habits. Although the bread we can buy nowadays differs from the good old one, we still have a better quality bread than can be found in usual stores in Great Britain or USA (tried in both countries ;). What makes our most popular bread different is use of wheat flour and RYE flour. The thing I noticed in american bread ingredients are e.g. use of sugar – sugar is completely useless unless we think about sth like french croissants; use of barley malt, molasses and beta-caroten – these substances do not have a significant nutritient value (nor the taste ones), they’re added as a result of health-campaign for unrefined flour containing more fiber helping in digesting and vitamins from B group. Substances mentioned above change the colour of the bread, so it looks like the healthy one. Someone from the previous commenters said that whole generations grew up on refined flour. Yes, it’s not toxic and yes, the lack of those microelements is not dangerous for customers from high-developed countries. But this way why should we eat fruits and vegetables? Some might notice addition of iron, folic acids and B vitamins and other substances. This is exactly because of not using unrefined flour which is economically worser than the refined one (maybe except folic acid can be find in vegetables and as we don’t eat them as often as before we suffer from lack of this element), also because bread from this kind of flour is not so “plumpy”, light and also it takes more time for the bread to grow (which means less breads in one hour and so on which is “economically” not sufficient). Do you know that in Poland and other countries in Europe good bread is the one which contains very little number of ingredients? You can find a great bread containing only unrefined flour, water, salt, a little bit of oil and yeast! Personally I believe bread is one of those things that pseudo-upgrades are just making it worser. Now in my own country, after 17 years of capitalism the most popular bread is somewhat mediocre, the best one we find in Ukraine and even Russia…

I love homemade bread. I honestly don’t remember the last time I bought a loaf from the store. I have a breadmaker and a kitchen aid mixer. A majority of the time I use the breadmaker. I’ve had the thing for years and it’s more then paid for itself. It’s nice to set it up before bed, set the timer and wake up to fresh bread. I enjoy making it from scratch too, but I’ve yet to find a good whole wheat bread recipe that I like. I’ll have to try this one. Thanks!

thank you SO Much for this post-and the pictures too. I’m going to try and make my first loaf of bread this week. I hate that there is HFCS in most of the loaves of bread at the store, but I’ve been scared to make my own because I am never able to get my dough to rise properly. Your pictures will help me know if I’m doing it right :)

Sweeeeet! I am itching to try this recipe. One question for everyone though. I live in Denver. How should I modify this recipe for high altitude baking? I understand that you can purchase flour specifically for baking in high altitudes, but would this be enough to make the bread not come out the oven as a floor tile?

Sure, baking bread is a fun time-consuming activity, but why not go to a bakery rather than a supermarket? Find one which doesn’t use preservatives, and you can have fresh baked bread first thing in the morning.

I tried this tonight – it turned out really nice. What I did to rise it was fill my kitchen sink with warm water and covered the bowl with wax paper. The dough more than doubled in size. It had a nice brown crust on it too. It went well with bacon and eggs.

Trent – I tried the recipe tonight. Great directions with pictures. But…… you never say when to add the other ingredients besides the yeast and flour. You may want to update your great pictorial directions.

I am reading your note from Belgium, Europe. Surprisingly, we do use in Europe “bread machines” where you just put all the ingredients… The machine goes automatically through the whole bread making process, mix, dough, cook.. It takes 5 minutes to “launch” the process, many programming choices are available. You find them for example with Panasonic.
Those machines are quite popular here in Europe. Are they unknown in US? Perhaps a good business oportunity!

Trent, thank you so much for writing this article, your “how-to” was excellent, great pictures. When I bought the yeast in the little packets, there was no instructions on the back… a cup of water worked just like you mentioned. Being new to the kitchen this was a big help. Thanks again.

Other than cleaning your house, I can’t think of many better ways to improve your quality of life without spending any extra money. I started baking all our bread this year – mostly whole wheat from the recipe on the King Arthur bag (3 loaves/week for our family of 5), and no-knead (*great* whenever we plan to have bread with dinner). Your method of shaping the dough (rolling it up) looks like an improvement – I’ll try it this week.

Also, someone asked how long to knead with the KitchenAid. I add all the ingredients, turn the dough hook on speed 4, and when the dough starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl as I slowly add more flour, I start the timer for 5 minutes, after which the kneading is done. Then I drizzle in a little oil as I turn it off, form the dough into a ball and plop it back into the oiled bowl to rise. (CookWise by Shirley O. Corriher says 4-7 minutes is OK on speed 4.)

I developed a severe allergy to soy in 2003. Since then, I have to cook everything from scratch! You will notice that 60% of the products in the grocery stores contain soy, so you can imagine what a chore it is for me to go the the store.
When I get lazy (because I have to cook everything), I use my breadmaker to make bread.
sometimes I put it on the dough cycle only and I’m able to make rolls, Italian bread, etc..

One thing I want to bring to your attention..don’t use cooking spray! It has soybean oil. Instead, use Safflower or Olive oil.
And, only use real butter, never margarine.

I have a book being published right now called “The Hidden Dangers of Soy”. You will learn how to substitute ingredients and that soy is not the health food it’s cracked up to be. It’s contributing to a lot of health problems for adults and children.

Sign up for a free membership and receive newsletters, soy-free recipes, food alerts, and blog.

I love your cooking posts since you make it much more straightforward than a recipe does and explain HOW to do things step by step. I think it gives beginners confidence that you can often make slight variations to a recipe and it will turn out ok or better.

Thanks so much for this post. I’ve wanted to make bread for a long time, but to be perfectly honest, I never thought that it could ever be so easy or so good. The end product was a little sweet for my taste, but I’m sure it’ll be easy to adjust. Never got to try it for sandwiches… because one of my roommates and I devoured it all in one night. Next loaf!

I tried this recipe this weekend; first time EVER baking bread and it turned out really, really well. I was so pleased, even though it took 3 hours!! I actually ran out of time at the end and left the dough in the loaf pan on the counter with the towel over it for several hours before returning to bake it, and it still turned out great. If you can work the 1-hour-waits around your schedule by extending them, then it’s really not uncomfortably time-consuming. Seriously, the best grilled cheese ever. Thanks so much for the post.

I tried the recipe this weekend. I printed it out and got a little confused with ingredients and left the milk out but it turned out pretty good! I’m going to try again next weekend. Although you mentioned mixing the yeast with 1 cup of water and the directions on the yest i got only said 1/4 cup. this makes a big difference in the amount of flour to add. Thanks for the post! I cant wait to try again!

Thanks Trent for the wonderful homemade bread recipe. I’ve just kneaded the 2nd loaf for the 2nd day running! My kids just love it!
I couldn’t believe that making homemade bread can be as simple as what you have shared with us.The detailed instructions were easy to follow. Thanks once again. My family is looking forward to more such reipes from you.
~ from Cheah KH, of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Waiting for the dough to rise on my second loaf as I type. Made the first a couple days ago and it came out great. You weren’t kidding about the toast. Thanks a bunch. I really needed something to kickstart something I’d been wanting to do for a while and this did the trick.

It really turned out great! For those complaining about the bread being too dense, try leaving it longer after you punch it down. I had to go out and my bread sat for almost 4 hours on the second rise. Expecting it to be ruined – quite the opposite happened. It turned out fluffy and perfect.

I made a loaf yesterday and was surprised at how little effort it took. My husband commented that if I had made that for him on our first date he would have married me a lot sooner and would have found a better job so that I could stay home and bake bread for him every day!

The bread is in the oven! This is the first time I’ve ever tried to bake anything other then, say, Tostino’s pizzas, or pre baked cakes and such. Pretty much your average bachelor with no baking experience what so ever. However! Home made bread seems like it would taste better and has that sort of neato hippie off the grid type thing goin on. I’ll let ya know how it turns out in a bit! Awesome page.

Thanks to you, Trent, this is enough to make me want to hop in the kitchen and start baking!! I’ve been wanting to get in there anyway. We got all these beautiful new stainless steel appliances when we moved into this house a few years ago, and now all we do is eat out! My hubby says….now, WHY EXACTLY did we get all these appliances?? To which I reply — because they look so good in there!!!! Besides, you never know when somebody might decide to come home with us from the restaurant! Oh, and my favorite thing to make — RESERVATIONS!!! Thanks again Trent….and, has anybody tried to make a business venture out of baking the bread?? Would love to hear about that…need to do some fundraising for my son’s baseball team…

What I do with fresh bread, since its really only stays fresh for a day or two, is either slice it up and freeze the slices like others have suggested, or I slice it up, make sandwiches to take into work, and freeze the sandwiches. That way, I just pull a sandwich out of the freezer in the morning, take it to work, and I have a great sandwice to eat for lunch with very little fuss in the morning.

I bought a loaf of fresh Olive Bread a few days ago; I made sandwiches out of the leftovers with turkey and pepperjack cheese, wrapped them in saran wrap, and put the indivially wrapped sandwiches into a big gallon freezer bag (got about 6 sandwiches out of the loaf). The only thing to remember is leave the condiments off; they don’t freeze well. Add them after the sandwich is defrosted.

I haven’t read the whole of the comments, but the question of how a single person might eat a whole loaf before it went stale reminded me of how i managed for a couple of years. I made a pita bread recipe up on weekends (From_Baking with Julia_), left the dough in the fridge, and made one pita a day. The dough would get more sour as the week progressed, but i like sourdough and it was still a fresh pita.

I do wish i had a baking stone for that sort of baking.

I quit when i moved to San Francisco, because the off the shelf sourdough is just wonderful and my kitchen seemed already more alive with local yeasts than i really was comfortable.

Thanks for the recipe! I made 2 loafs last night, and another 2 tonight. I am making stuffing for T’giving, and have already made 16 cups of croutons for the stuffing with this bread. BTW, if anyone is wondering, it took 2 loafs and 4 more slices to get 16 cups croutons. I cut up the bread into about 1/2 inch square pieces, and cooked them in the oven for 30 minutes at 350. I think it will be fantastic!

I am going to try and freeze one sliced loaf and see how that works out.

this bread recipe is great I’m a 12yr old boy aspiring to be a world class chef one day I’ve been making about 3 loaves a week of this recipe for me and my family and I love it also makes that great garlic bread thanks for the recipe

1) Most yeast packet instructions tell you to add 1/4 cup of water, in my experience. If you follow these instructions with only 1/4 cup of water the dough turns out very dry and does not rise well; I suspect that 2 cups of flour just makes it too thick. Try adding a half cup or full cup at the beginning, experiment, and see what you like.

2) If you have a sifter, sift the flour again. Or several times, even – that should make the bread more even and lighter.

3) If you want to put the extra effort into it, warm all of the ingredients in the oven for a few minutes (everything, including flour, except the yeast) before mixing them together. Don’t let it get to hot, though, or you’ll kill the yeast. 100-110 degrees should be fine.

4) Adding a little extra butter doesn’t seem to hurt it. Or a lot extra. I misread the intructions and used 5 Tablespoons instead of 5 teaspoons. It doesn’t rise QUITE as well with all the oil holding it down, but you don’t have to butter it. Ever.

Trent – would you be able to post these same instructions but with using a KitchenAid mixer? We just bought a KitchenAid recently and we are not exactly sure how to adjust the recipe above to use it. How long to mix, at what speeds, which attachment to use, etc. Thanks!

We started backing our own bread about 2 months ago, for the reasons you stated – to prevent shelf-life preservatives from entering our system. Would like to add one point to your commentary – if you’re going through the trouble of making your own bread then start with ingredients you are sure aren’t adding preservatives back into your food. GO ORGANIC ALL THE WAY!

Anyone have any neat suggestions for slicing it? I’ve got a bread knife (one of those cheap ones you get in a $20 knife set), but can’t seem to get thin enough slices while still slicing straight. Any tricks?

Found this article when it was digged recently and can’t wait to try it; probably going to have a go tomorrow. Had to get yeast and a bread loaf tin and all sorts first! Haven’t even got a bread knife!

Has anyone tried using instant yeast? That’s the kind of yeast we ended up buying (that is, you don’t need to mix it with water first).

Thought I’d mention that bread here in the UK is actually pretty good. You can still get cheap and crappy bread, but our wholemeal bread is great. It’s one thing I tend to pay a bit of a premium for (something that homebaking may alleviate!). Nothing quite like good bread. My fiancée recently moved here from Canada and she said the wholemeal bread there is terrible, but here she can eat it :)

We have been making Whole Wheat Bread in a Machine for 18 or 19 years now. We have a Grain Master Whisper Mill and grind Wheat that we get from Wheat Montana (wheatmontana.com) in Three Forks, MT 59752. We picked up the wheat on our way thru there when we were traveling out West while my Mother was still alive. We are now able to find the Wheat locally in an Amish Market. My wife says she uses 1/2 cup white flour to 3 1/4 cups of Whole Wheat. I don’t think I have eaten a slice of White Bread since we have been making our own bread at home.

I made this bread earlier this week – it was very good, although a little denser than I’m used to, despite sifting the flour. I used a Pyrex glass loaf pan and dusted it with plenty of cornstarch, but the loaf completely stuck to the bottom of the pan. I’ll use non-stick spray from now on. For those wondering about how long the bread stays good, I made mine exactly to this recipe, and it’s been sitting in a plastic bag on my counter since Tuesday (it’s Sunday now) and shows no signs of mold or hardening.

Imagining freshly baked bread made my mouth water so I just had to try and bake some today. And I did. And it’s amazing and soft and yummy. Half the flour I used was whole wheat but you can’t tell — I used a couple of slices to make myself a breakfast sandwich with canadian ham, swiss cheese, and egg, and the bread just makes it freakin’ fantastic!

Thanks for sharing the recipe :) Although my yeast instructions said to stir some yeast with 1/4 cup of water… It looked very dry so I took your suggestion of using a full cup and it came out awesome.

This is an awesome article. I just love getting a look into other people’s kitchen and cooking techniques. I’m a whole wheat bread person myself, and have yet to find my “staple” recipe — but I’m getting close :) The smell of fresh-baked breat… YUM.

I’ve tried this recipe at least fives times and have had varied results. The general trend seems to be that as I go, my loaves keep getting worse. I don’t know what’s wrong. My first ever attempt at making homemade bread was from this site about a month ago and it was a great loaf! Everything during preparation, rising, and baking went swell. The second time I tried this recipe I came out with a loaf that didn’t rise very much and just wasn’t really all that successful. The amount, brand, and type of ingredients for both of my first attempts stayed constant. The third attempt I made, I used King Arthur’s whole wheat flour and it worked okay, but the loaf still didn’t rise enough. The fourth attempt was just a complete failure. The loaf didn’t really rise at all and it came out all misshapen and looked somewhat like a large cooked yam. So on my fifth attempt I used King Arthur’s whole wheat flour again and it worked better than try #4. I let it sit and rise a little longer (about two or three hours) and it still is a stout loaf. Is the yeast the problem? Can someone please help me out?! Thanks!

I use a bread slicer to get nice even slices of homemade bread. It is a plastic holder for the bread, flat bottom and ends, open top, with slots on the sides to guide your bread knife. You just put your loaf of bread into it, use the sides as a guide and slice away. You can make even slices of bread every time. I forget where I bought this but the sides fold down for cleaning as well as storage. I love it. I used to squash my bread every time while trying to cut it, of course most of the time I was trying to cut warm bread because it is so good warm.

I am a Peace Corps volunteer in Jordan. Ive tried making bread twice now, but the dough just wont rise. I know the yeast is not expired and it fizzes when i add the warm water. However the directions for the yeast are in french, but I just used a cup as suggested. The only other thing I can think of is that my house is too cold. You’d think its not cold in the middle east, but with no central heating 50 outside means 50 inside. Anyhow any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

Jessica- the cold is the problem. heat your oven up slightly and let the dough rise in there (with over turned off) or follow the directions someone gave above about letting it rise in the oven with a container of steaming water. Good luck- yay Peace Corps!!

This sounds like the easyist recipe that I have came across so far!! I love to cook and bake, breads have just became my newest task to master. I hope this works! I am going to try it right now!! Thank you!!

Fantastic article. Really great photos are a big help to those of us that are bread-challenged. It’s been a long time since I’ve tried but your post is so nicely put together that I think I will try it again!

I’m going to try a vegan variation (soy milk and margarine) tomorrow I think. This will make bread much more cost effective for me (which usually I can’t finish and at $3 a loaf for organic it gets expensive). Thanks muchly!

Trent,
Great recipe with excellent pictures!
Kudos to you!
Comments:
1. Follow Alton Brown’s advice: let dough rise in the oven, uncovered, place a quart of boiling water in a shallow pan. This will warm and humidfy the air. This help our Jordanian friend.
2. Substitute olive oil for the butter: much less saturated fat, which is heart unhealthy.
3. Egg wash or cornstarch wash before baking will give a nice crispy crust.
4. Making bread is hard work. After making my own bread, I don’t complain when I have to pay $5 for artisan loaf. It’s worth it! Think of much time it takes to make this “cheap” loaf.

Skimming the comments, I have not found a reference to evaporated or powdered milk (sorry, I know milk is not everyone’s cup of, er, tea, due to dietary/ environmental/ humanitarian concerns, but it was mentioned in the original recipe). I have found that not only is it cheaper and more space-effective, it approximates the more tender crumb one gets from scalding the milk beforehand (little step, big difference).

The recipe for challah from _Baking Illustrated_ hits my bread machine at least once a week; it may be better handmade, but from the machine it is wonderful, takes three minutes of actual work, and best of all, is not cleanup-intensive.

I dehydrate squash and pumpkin seed and then put them in the coffee grinder till they are powder and add a TBsp or two of those to the bread for extra nutrition. I also sometimes use 1-2 TBsp.flax seed ground up.
When i make dough for hambburger and hotdog buns I often add spices like onion and garlic powder, dill weed, thyme, rosemary, whatever. It makes flavorful buns.
I ogten use 2 TBsp olive or corn oil instead opf the butter and honey instead of the sugar. And I use 1 1/2 TBsp powdered rice milk instead of the milk.

Thanks for the great idea of making your own bread. My kitchen Aid was just sitting forlorn, waiting for a great project like this! I made my first loaf this afternoon and it turned out great! Thanks for this $$ saving tip. BTW, I just ran across your blog and so far am really enjoying it.

Notes:
– Always keep an eye on the kneading cycle and add a little extra milk or flour as needed. Getting the right consistency is really critical for a bread machine… it needs to be fairly wet to knead effectively, but not too sticky.
– This keeps well on the counter for upwards of 1 week. I always eat it all in 5-8 days.
– Make sure to buy the yeast in the big package at Costco! The little yeast packets are probably 20-50x more expensive per loaf and will kill your cost saving.
– Enjoy it toasted with butter, honey, and a dusting of cinnamon. Yum.

We had two side effects in our house when we started baking bread in-house.

1. Kids started getting hang of chemistry and biology. All they want to do now is let the yeast grow or starve the yeast, etc, etc.

2. The action in bedroom seems to be better on the days we bake. A great motivator to keep making our bread.

You don’t need as much yeast either. We use 1 (one) teaspoon of yeast for 2-4 cups of flour. Warming every liquid to about 80-100 degrees and letting the flour rise at about the same temperature will let the yeast work its magic.

Add honey to give honey taste or add pepper, sea salt and oregano or chopped dried tomato for spicy bread. You can substitute one cup of wheat flour.

One of my favorite memories is of my momma baking fresh bread for us kids. She would always make a homemade chocolate sauce that would be ready when the first loaf cooled. We would have a warm slice of bread spread with chocholate that was better than any donut I have ever tasted. We were country kids with lots more blessings than we knew at the time… Thanks for bringing back that old memory. I have wanted to make my own bread for a while but haven’t made the time to do so. Maybe today…

I have, however, been making homemade tortillas for about 4 months now and we eat them almost daily, especially for breakfast. Here is the receipe I came up with after trying several different ones:

1 1/2 cups organic flour
1 teaspoos salt
3/4 teaspoon (aluminum free) baking powder
Mix these three ingredients and add:
1/4 cup canola or safflower oil
Mix again with pastry cutter or fork & add:
1/2 cup very warm water
Mix again until forms a ball and roll ball around to remove remaining residue from sides of bowl. Remove from bowl and kneed in hands for 6 or 7 minutes until dough is smooth and elastic. Don’t skimp on the kneeding time. This mix is small enough to hold in your hands and I often sit at the kitchen table with my family and talk while I kneed the dough from hand to hand. It is a calm and pleasant time. After kneeding, place the ball of dough back into the bowl and cover with a damp cloth. Let sit for at least 15 minutes. (This is a good time to get the rest of breakfast going.) Divide the dough in half and each half into four equal sized pieces. This will make 8 small balls of dough, approximately the same size. (I don’t flour my rolling surface or my rolling pin because it will make the tortillas taste powdery and with this recipe I haven’t found the need to.) Roll each little ball of dough out to about 1/8 inch thickness. (A little thinner is ok, it just means they cook faster.) You can get a tortilla press at WalMart to press them out if you like. (My husband likes to tease me if mine don’t always come out perfectly round, especially if I am in a hurry when rolling them. He sure doesn’t mind eating these imperfectly shaped ones though, because they are delicious!) Cook 60 to 90 seconds on each side on low until lightly browned. You can turn more frequently if neccessary.

As you can see, I don’t use lard in my tortillas. These are a lot healthier. Lard or shortening would make them more flexible, even after they cool but mine don’t usually last that long. If they cool, they are a bit more rigid but if I warm them by placing them back on the stove for a few seconds on each side, they are back soft again. If I have extras, I only cook them a little on each side and store them in a bag for the next meal. At that time, I brown them on each side and they are great.

These can be cooked on a griddle or in a pan. I usually cook them directly on my nice clean glass cooktop because it works the best for me. Each pan and each stove vary so you will just have to see which temperature on your stove is best and which pan works best for you. Don’t overcook, and turn them often at first so they don’t burn. Just make sure they show a little brown on each side. ENJOY!

I have just baked my very first loaf of bread ( whole wheat ) and just minutes ago I removed it from the oven. It feels quite hard. I know I should wait till it cools before asking this question but I can’t. Is my loaf of bread going to be a loaf of brick? ha ha
I will post the results in an hour or two after it cools. Either way I’m gonna toast it and eat it so that’s ok but I want to know if this is normal and if not, what can I do next time to have it come out softer? Thanks anyone who may reply to this. I do work in concrete and mix cement often, but I hope this doesn’t have an effect on my baking a loaf of bread ??? lol

Well, here’s the results. The loaf was just a tad firm but not hard at all and it is scrumptious delicious. I just had my first piece toasted with butter and I loved it. Mmmmmmmmmmm
Can’t wait to have some in the morning with tea or coffee. Thanks for the article and….happy baking everyone!

Making bread IS hard work, as was pointed out,
but it’s FUN hard word, especially if you
involve your kids, like my dad did. I hadn’t
really thought too much about doing it myself
until I read this article. To the person who
noted the firmness of the whole wheat loaf, making
a half white, half whole wheat bread will be
pretty close to white, in ‘fluffiness’. As you add
more whole wheat flour, my bread gets ‘firmer’,
but just as tasty (imho) and probably healthier.
Next experiments: substituting honey for sugar,
and olive oil for butter….and maybe 2% for
whole milk. Though really, with the quantities
we’re talking about, a little butter, sugar, and
whole milk shouldn’t rot my body TOO much, LoL…

I found you on Google today. Love the recipe! I am shocked at how expensive bread is these days. Not to mention groceries in general. It is nice to know that I am able to make homeade bread and serve to my family. I have chickens and a vegetable garden now all I need is a pioneer woman website – ha! Thanks for the great pictures and easy description. The bread is awesome. Now onto Wheat…eek!

Never baked before in my life, love fresh bread, wanted to try this recipe out.

Other than one false start (added 4 cups of milk instead of 1/4 after too quick a glance at the recipe), it turned out wonderful. The pictures are extremely helpful. I kept running back to the computer to be shocked and pleased to see that mine looked like the pictures.

A few comments. I just found this site and am delighted. I have a Breadman machine and have made bread for about 2 years now. I NEVER buy bread at the market. But I only run the machine through the second rising; take it out and barely knead it a bit to form it to fit my bread pan. I turn the over light on when I start the machine, and by the time I have the bread in the pan, the temp in the oven is perfect for rising the bread. I let it rise about 45 minutes, then turn on the oven and let it bake about 35 minutes. Perfect. Have been using an organic bread mix from Wood Prairie Farm (see their website; all are delicious, but I LOVE their breakfast bread mix), but have been thinking of going to whole grain and grinding my own flour. The mixes are a bit expensive, and I would like to make my own flour. Just haven’t had time to do it that way.
To keep it fresh, I use a plastic bag such as used in the produce section of the supermarket, and when I cut a few slices off it will then fit in a ziplock as well. Keeps well for about 6 days, and then into the fridge until it’s used up.
For those who bake only for themselves, they can make half the recipe and use a small bread pan. Or split the dough and make 2 loaves and freeze one of them. The slices are a little smaller, but use four to make a sandwich instead of the two larger slices from a regular loaf.
I always use honey instead of sugar. Store-bought honey has as much as 49% Karo syrup (of course it doesn’t say so on the label), and I get mine from the farm where it is pure honey. What a great difference! Health Food stores sometimes have pure, no Karo.
You can also use water instead of milk in your recipes. And I use olive oil instead of butter. Makes great bread! I wouldn’t think of buying bread in the grocery anymore!
Enjoy!
And Trent, thanks so much for all your comments. I’m going right now to sign up to receive it everyday!

Wow, I have been using your receipe for two weeks and my bread is WONDERFUL!! I even tried cinnamon and it came out WONDERFUL! For the last two weeks I only bought one loaf of bread from the store because I ran out of my homemade. I went online tonight to research other receipes and found them rather difficult to follow and more complex ingredients. I am so HAPPY I found your website the first time I did a search. I just wanted to share with everyone how wonderful you receipe worked!!! I went out and bought some bulk yeast (because everyone wants me to make more bread) but I don’t know how to measure it. Thanks again for the directions!!! …..the toast is MAGNIFICIANT!!!! Family fun and all……….

I made this bread for the first time on Saturday and it was AWESOME! I can’t wait to try a whole wheat, which is my personal bread preference. It was really easy, too. First time out of the gate it came out delicious.

I’m an American living in Brazil, and I wanted to find a homemade recipe for homemade bread…So, I went looking on the website and found your website. I had followed your instructions to the letter…but I did not know, that here in Brazil…there is a difference in “Active Dry Yeast”. One is for baking cakes and another is for baking breads, I would like to know why the difference! Just as an added comment for those people who are like me…baking bread for the first time. Thanks!

Wow! I just made bread! I can’t believe it :) and it’s GOOD bread, lol. I’ve always been a decent cook and good baker, but never attempted bread b/c it always intimidated me but your recipe seemed easy and I actually have a kitchenaid so it was even easier. Thank you so much for your recipe!!

Ah, if only my house wasn’t so chilly. I haven’t been able to make a good loaf of bread since I moved in, regardless of season.

Anyway, it is worth mentioning that if you plan on making bread often enough you should get that little jar or active-dry yeast. I think it ran me around $6 I picked one up. It does lose power after a few months, but after ten or so loaves you’re saving money if you buy a lot of the little single-use packets.

Amazing, truly amazing! I have only used bread-makers to bake my own loaves in the past, but from now on I am using this recipe! I have found the bread to be a delicious way to start out my day, and it is so much cheaper and better tasting than that white bread from the store. My next experiment is using whole-wheat flour…

Your post is exactly what an unexperienced baker and first time bread maker like myself needs to start off on the wonderful joys of baking fresh bread.

To say a little bit about what I think some beginners may need stressed and also what led me to have to start my batch of bread over is making sure that the temperature of you bowl with the warm water is not hot. I did not realize it but what I took as warm, apparently the yeast did not agree. After mixing and following the 1st rise protion in the bowl. I noticed that my bread did not rise at all.

Well alarmed, of course, I started googling as much as possible to figure out what was wrong. Well after some seraching I found that a few things could have been in play.

1. My water was to a hot and possibly killed the yeast.

2. The area from which I placed my dough to rise was not at the right temp.

3. My yeast may have be old (dated may be better) and has interfered with the rising process.

Well for me options 3 was easily ruled out since I just bought and just opened for you bread project a container of “Red Star” Yeast, and option 2 was ruled out because I followed a tip below stating if you place you oven on the warm temp and shut it off (I have a digital and manual oven temp in my oven so I could gauge the temp was at 75-80 degrees). So that couldn’t have been the problem.

It must have been option 1, and I killed my yeast before I even complete the project.

Once I disposed of my 1st try, I immediately tried again making sure that the temp was at a “baby bottle” temperature completed all steps as suggestred above, and the final look came out absolutely gorgeous!!!!!

I am one of those people who is a great cook ( which you can guage how your food is going to taste by simply tatsting throughout the cooking process and you can remedy anything that needs a quick fix ), but I have always been very hesistant with baking because of the small margins for error is so small (when you dealing with temperatures, measurements and natural climatic forces one may deal with in their area depending on the season).

Thanks again for I am on my way to on successfully completing a 12-step program that will free me of my baking phobias. ;-)

P.S.

Just as a reminder to those whom have comments below that foreshadow the true purpose of Trent’s site with contentment and better recipe ideas.

I think that he has achieved his purpose in offering a basic,no mixer required (especially important for me since I don’t own one, method to introduce one to the joys of baking.

Hi thanks for the great recipe and detail. My daughter and I had a great time making this and it turned out great.
I will definatley use again!!!
P.S.
This was my first time making anything from scratch :) Since I was terrified it wouldn’t rise…etc !!

I’d like to comment that only two days ago I came across this thread and became fascinated with bread making. I already make my own laundry detergent, body soaps, shampoos, hand sanitizers, air freshners etc. LOL I know … I’m hippie that way. Anyways, I’m doing well staying away from all these FDA-approved carcinogens that are added to our foods, and since we eat lots of bread, I decided to start making them fresh. As someone pointed out, bread shouldn’t last forever. Scary! Right now, I’m waiting for the dough to rise the first time. I had a little bit of a problem though. I followed the instructions down to the letter, and after all was added, the dough was very crumbly while mixing. I ended having to add another half a cup or so of water. Did I do something wrong? I’d appreciate any comment.

So, I’ve made two loaves of bread! They sure are good! I did notice, however, that I find myself having to add more water than as indicated in the recipe. I used two different recipes; one was the one mentioned at the start of this page, and the other was found in another website. Do you find yourself adding more water as needed?

Once baked, wrap it around a moist/wet kitcken cloth and once cooled, place it in a paper bag and then on a plastic bag (shopping bag or ziplock… but at the 3rd day this has to go in the refrigerator to prevent mold. Most of the times my bread is gone before the 3rd day.

Also this way prevents the formation of the hard crust that many older people and little children have a hard time biting with little or no teeth.

I love to make bread, the smell of it in my house and the ‘mom knows best’ that this comes with… great I love you we can make.

I have to admit it has been a while since I have made homemade bread. I have had great success with the sourdough recipe in the Tightwad Gazette. Also, I have a couple of those clay cookers that I have purchased very inexpensively at thrift stores and they bake the best bread – just like the expensive gourmet french loaves at the store. You soak them in water around 15-30 minutes I think before putting in the bread. I’ve been reading your site since needing to get back into this stuff and it is great, thanks!

Tis a very good recipe. I am only 14 and I like to make bread…..yes I know i am a strange boy and all but its fun….It takes a while but its worth it….Tis also good to eat….I also have something else to say…..I tried to make the garlic bread but it didn’t taste very “garlicy.”I think that there should be more garlic in it but that is just my option… So yeah I give it a thumbs up.

GREAT!
I bookmaked this site. It is very informative. YES, I will be making bread starting tommorow.
I have a question? My Mother taught me to make a Polish Sweet bread (BABKA). Mine is delicious. When ever I make it, the whole neighborhood turns out. They can smell it from outside.
But my question to you is. You say to hand knead it. I use the kneading tool on my kitchen aid mixer. It comes out perfect. I never hand knead.
I do the same with Pasta, And a dish that we call (PIEROGI). My Mom was amazed how easy it was.

I’ve decided to start making bread myself, but I was worried that it would become a chore that I would dread doing. But I found a recipe that makes multiple loaves and after the first rise, I shape them into loaves, put one in the bread pan to bake and I freeze the other three. When I use the frozen dough, it rises as the dough thaws out. This is very handy if I run out of bread during the week, because I don’t have time to make the dough.

I love this! I’m not the most domestic of people and the pictures along with the detailed instructions make it so that even /I/ can do this! Have you thought about publishing a book “Baking Bread for Dummies”? I’d sure buy it!
Thanks for this!

When I was a child, I remember my aunt Mary making homemade bread. Now that I’m married, I wanted to make homemade bread for my family. Thanks Trent for your wonderful detailed instruction for making bread. I followed your recipe the best I could and my bread turned out just wonderful. Since then I made two more loafs and each time the bread turned out wonderful. No bread left over after each meal. Thanks Trent for helping me bring homemade bread making to life in my house. Awesome recipe.
Rick F

Soo.. I’ve tried making bread with the recipe three times, and all three times kinda failed. (Edible, but definitely not bread-shaped) On the second rising, it doesn’t fill the bread-pan at all. I end up with a “flat-bread” looking loaf. The first two loaves were pretty chewy as well. The third loaf is still cooling off, but I’m sure it’ll be chewy as well.

Would being at sea-level impact the yeast that much? What could I be doing wrong?

I finally got this recipe to work by kneading the dough again before rolling it up and placing in the bread pan. Now that it actually rose, it’s delicous!
I’ll definitely be making this a lot in the future. I never want store bought bread again!

Don’t give up, you might have to try a few times before you get your bread right. Like all things, bread has its tricks, its fundamentals, and its details, and a beginner recipe can’t touch on them all. But you will succeed if you continue to learn and try.

Some things to consider,

1st problem:

your bread probably turned out weird because of the fact that the dough collapsed on top indicated that it is overrisen on the top, and that the gluten has not developed and cross-linked enough to form a reliable network in the bread and not on the bottom.

To fix this, make sure you have kneaded the dough enough, or let it rest a long long time by itself (something Trent didn’t get into, and shouldn’t have, in his beginner’s recipe)

For the dough development, just knead the dough long enough that it feels “silky”. gluten in a sticky protein, and when you get it wet mush it around, it links up with all the other gluten in the dough and forms a flexible “rubber-bandy” type blob that we call “bread dough”! So you need to press and knead the bread into itself enough for this to happen (10 or 20 minutes by hand, or, alternately, you can just knead the dough a little, put it in a plastic container in the fridge for overnight, and it will accomplish the same thing over time for less work. Then just pull the dough out and go on with the “punching” (which really should be called “pressing”) and loaf-forming and baking.

2nd problem:

I’m guessing that a second failing was in the “punch down” phase, which is intended to remove and redistribute excess carbon dioxide in the dough (from the yeast metabolism) so that the yeast have a healthy environment to continue to metabolize the starches in the bread during the final “proofing” (after the dough is formed into a loaf, bakers call the rise a “proof”) You need to gently “press” (not violently punch) the dough all over to gently express excess gases from the dough. You may hear the dough gently “sigh” as you do this.

Then, form the loaf, and put it in the greased pan.

Then note how tall the dough is in the pan. You don’t want it to rise too much, probably not more than 50% higher than its original state. But the recipe should take care of this.

Don’t put the dough in too warm a space. Dough is not like babies, it’s not going to die if it’s too cold, it just won’t reproduce and metabolize as quickly. (Incidentally, for every 10 degrees Fahrenheit, dough metabolism doubles. So rising at 60 degrees takes about twice as long as at 70 degrees . If it takes 2 hours at 70 degrees, it will take 2x2x2x2 or 16 hours to rise in the fridge at 38 (40) degrees F. (Which, for me, is perfect-I just make the dough, refrigerate it, and the next day whenever it’s convenient I take it out and go on with the recipe).

When you bake it, the bread will probably come close to doubling its size from its original state, because you will have loaded it with tiny gas pockets (trapped within the gluten network) that expand due to gas expansion and steam pressure that develops inside the dough as it cooks. This expansion stretches the gluten network outward until the gluten strands hit certain temperature and cook, becoming stronger and holding their shape (gluten is protein, and protein hardens when it cooks).

Ok, so basically, just make sure you 1) knead the dough enough so that it

Why?

because the gluten strands are like rubber bands and have a given capacity to stretch, which depends on the dough you have made. They will stretch and break, letting the gas out and collapsing the dough if you let it overrise. For most breads, just don’t let it more than double in size.

And why press, not punch, the dough down?

Because you don’t want to stress the stretched gluten strands (breaking some of them that get stretched by the punch, and causing some of the other ones to stick together by over collapsing the air pockets in the bread and causing the gluten strands and sheets and bubbles to stick to one another instead of staying as bubbles, but smaller bubbles.

Incidentally, you can stick with Trent’s recipe until you master it, or, if you want an “overnight” recipe with little to no kneading, look up “no knead bread” by Mark Bittman in the NY Times. it’s a fantastic loaf that takes very little time, and little to no kneading, but, again, is an overnight (mix the dough now and wait 18 hours) type recipe, which works great for those times where you don’t want to be watching to see how the dough is rising over the next four hours..

also, if your dough is underbaked, you may have a) an oven that bakes at a different temperature than you set it for and/or b) a dough that is too wet.

regarding (b):
When you are measuring the flour, use dry measuring cups (the ones without the spouts)

When you are doing water and liquids, use wet measuring cups (the ones with the spouts)

Wet measure and dry measure are different!

Once you know the feel of good dough, it won’t matter so much. But right now, if you have a dough that’s too wet, it won’t cook through on the bottom but will on the top and will always star “doughy” and overmoist. Actually, come to think of it, that’s probably my best guess as to what happened with your dough–you just had too much liquid in it.

REgardingn (b) If you have an oven thermometer, check to see how well your oven keeps temperature. Some bake at 375 when set at 400, others bake at 425 when set at 400. If you don’t have one, borrow one for a day! Take the temperature, you won’t know and if your oven isn’t as hot as the recipe calls for, you will get the dreaded “underbaking” and soggy dough!

Temperature is a crucial element to bread and a lot of cooking. In the long run, it’s worth it to get a decent thermometer. Without temperature information you are shooting in the dark in a lot of cases.

i have an electronic one with a probe (if I was buying again, I would get one that was good for temperatures to zero or 10 below).

For years I used a $5 instant-read thermometer but had no way of knowing my oven temperature, though I could have bought a $10 oven thermometer.

if you are frugal, you will cook, and if you cook, there will be times when a thermometer is very very helpful. I don’t like to shoot in the dark when I’m dealing with a) my hunger and b) a whole bath of ingredients that cost me $$ to buy!

I did my first loaf last night! It turned out great… What a great feeling you get from doing something yourself – and better than the supermarket does it. 2 Observations – Firstly, I used a Kitchen Aid mixer like trent, so typically the dough hook does it all – but you only need to knead for about half the time (5 min) on low. Second, I have a natural gas stove, and I noticed 30 min at 400 overcooked it slightly (bit of a crispy crust). Most people say NG cooks hotter. Either way, 30 min at 375 would probably work better next time. Next up – Pasta! I also followed the advice of many previous posts and used about a cup of water for the yeast, despite the package only saying 1/4 cup. Deeeelish.

Have to admit kind of addicted to the concepts on this site right now! I’ve been making my own bread the last few weeks for health reasons. I’d read that bread is the best way to absorb iodine and that store bought bread uses Bromide (nasty chemical) instead, not to mention all of the preservatives! Anyway, so I decided to do some comparative math. I typically buy wheat bread, but not necessarily Super High quality. So I’m basing my figures on a $2 loaf, just because it’s a nice round number. I could easily spend more money on it. I use a mixture of whole wheat and unbleached flour. Using the Betty crocker recipe which includes milk, butter, flour, sugar, salt and yeast, I make a double batch which gives me 4 loaves at a time. Assuming we don’t have any company that will last us for about a week. Here are the saving based on that:
BREAD SAVINGS
$2 average storebought loaf (higher quality more expensive
$1.25 per loaf (homemade, medium grade ingredients)
We use typically 4 loafs per week
16 loaves per month
192 loaves per year

$0.75 Savings per loaf
$3 per week saved
$12 per month saved
$144 per year saved

And I get to be Mrs. Contemporar Betty Crocker which my husband loves! I like to increase my savings even more by baking something in the oven simultaneously like roasted potatoes and carrots since the oven will be on anyway.

Hi, I noticed you are reluctant now to make sour dough bread because your comment suggests you have tried and failed. The url above will take you to my eHow page that shows you exactly how to make perfect sour dough bread. I make it about every 3 days for my family and this was my Mama’s recipe that she used to make tons of loaves for us. This recipe makes 3 loaves. I keep mine in the freezer until company shows up, then I hand it out.

okay, i am totally not going to read all those comments, lol! like… whoa!

but i bake bread every day.

i bake a loaf of white bread – not a large one, just one large enough for two adults, a toddler, and the odd guest – plus i bake roti (a west indian flatbread rather like a tortilla but not really) every other day or so (hubby’s trini and likes his traditional food).

one thing i do is i preheat the oven to the *highest* setting when i’m mixing the dough. the heat from the oven helps with the proofing (assuming i’m not proofing the dough overnight in the fridge). the main reason is that when you open the door to put the bread in, the temperature in the oven drops *drastically*. the oven then has to burn up hydro getting it back up to speed plus the direct heat is not doing good things to the bottom of your loaf. you preheat it megahigh and when you put your loaf in, you turn the temperature down to 400 degrees (or whatever you’re baking at – i bake at 400) and the oven doesn’t have to come back on.

another tip: if you toss in a few ice cubes, it’ll make the crust more tender, more chewy, and allow the loaf to rise higher because the crust won’t harden as fast.

final tip: the only thing i buy is flour – i take a chunk of dough from one day’s batch, then put it back in the bowl (that’s got all kinds of flour and dough chunks from today’s batch) and mix it with warm water and flour. leave it in the fridge and the next day, i just add flour and salted water until it’s dough again. keep repeating – you never have to buy yeast.

your bread will make something like 5% of the population ill. Don’t you know anything about wheat intolerance? gluten intolerance? wheat intolerance? milk/whey intolerance? How fucking hard is it to use, say, oat milk instead of cow spunk? You fucking idiots. fuck you, you pricks. why complain about “obscure” ingredients that don’t make anyone ill – yet you’re perfectly happy to fill it with gluten and fucking lactose!!!!!!!! Are you a retard?

So I got success with bread with a different recipe, but I think I figured out what I was doing wrong. (My dough wouldn’t rise once it was formed into loafs)

1) I was over-measuring the salt. Make sure you level the spoon off. (Silly mistake, I know)

2) Keep kneading. It takes me far longer than 10 minutes to get the bread kneaded right. After looking at other sites about bread making, I learned that the dough’s kneaded enough when you can take a chunk of dough and stretch it out until it gets transparent (-ish. Seeing light through it is good) If you’re not all that strong, your kneading won’t be as effective.

I just made 2 loafs last night, and they turned out great! The bread is ALOT denser then Store Purchased bread. If I want to make lighter fluffier Bread what do I need to do?? Do I leave it out longer between risings??? also I used that package Yeast put it in the bowl and added warm filtered tap water and the yeast clumped together I had a real hard time dissolving it. Maybe I should have put the water in first and add it slowly while adding the yeast. Also when i pulled the dough out for the first time it was really sticky! I couldn’t get it off my hands, I had to add more flour to get the dough a good consistency. but any how this is the first time I made bread! I was very pleased with the results!!!
I applaud Trent for this great Post & Pictures (Without the picture I probably would have messed up the whole thing!) Next I am going to try No Nnead Bread (http://nytimes.com/2006/11/08/dining/081mrex.html?_r=1&oref=slogin)
& Make more of these loafs! I am going to experiment with the (Proofing) times to see if I get a lighter texture bread & and try Bake Cinnamon Raisin Bread!

This is wonderful! Similar in price to store bought bread, but much tastier and more filling.

Ironically, you say you have trouble with sour dough bread? Try doubling the recipe and forgetting to double the yeast, let it sit in a warm oven over night with confused prayers to please, Please rise, and bake twelve hours later =P
I’m not a huge fan of sourdough myself, but my neighbors tell me it’s a sublime example.

Mike- I have the same problem with sticky dough, what I always do is coat my hands with some flour before I go in, seems to make all the difference =)

I prefer to stay away from anything with yeast in it. Yeast contains prions that form crystals in the brain, and can cause Alzheimer’s… and mad cow disease. Just google prions, crystal, and yeast to learn more. So I make sourdough bread from homemade starter. The rising times are longer, but the flavor is so good. I like to use fruit for sweetening, or raw natural honey. Otherwise the recipe is similar to those posted above. Also the starter is great for waffles, pancakes, biscuits, etc.

I *heart* me some homemade bread, that’s for sure. My recipe uses the equivilent of 1 pkg yeast but double the milk/flour. This way I get a loaf of bread for the week (and yes mine does last 7 days, around days 6&7 I will warm it in the oven with a small dish of water to re-hydrate it right befor eating) plus I have leftover dough for cheese sticks, onion buns or cinnamon twists.
On a side note: I will state for the record that I dislike the Kitchenaid mixers and all their over-hyped commercialness. My Bosch mixer has the same hp, better planetary rotation for kneading the dough and a lower centre (I’m Canadian so yes, it’s “re”) of gravity (stabilty!!); not to mention takes up WAY less space. And I can still buy all sorts of groovy attachments. It was harder to find, but worth all the effort. You have not witnessed truly glorious meringues until you have seen what a Bosch can do.
Back on topic: Most excellent post though, the price of bread is ridiculous and even though we barely make it through our loaf a week (only 2 of us, not big bread eaters), the extra buns etc are great to share when we have company over for coffee or to freeze and reheat for later. Everyone should get on this bandwagon! Plus it takes me a total of 10 minutes to mix and another 5-10 spread out to babysit and prep for baking. I usually rise and punch it down 2-3 times depending on how early I started the dough, gives very nice texture and I think the loaf lasts longer before drying out (I swear it, but I have no “scientific” proof).

Thanks! I used this recipe to make bread bowls for our broccoli cheese soup. Yum! I will definitely be using this recipe as a base and trying different variations. Who knew that homemade bread was so easy?

I just baked some bread using your basic recipe, and MAN did it turn out awesome! I altered a few of the ingredients, but it was easy to follow and good fun making it, thank you. :)

I replaced the butter with olive oil, used slightly less sugar (3 instead of 5 tsp) and replaced 1 cup of the unbleached flour with whole wheat bread flour. It came out light, fluffy, and DIVINE! I will be making this on a weekly basis….I fear that the bakeries will now have to go without my weekly visit….hehe….

This is great. We eat a lot of bread in the house, and my husband’s mother makes homemade bread at home. This was something the kids and I could do together and it’s fun and easy. Thank you for the posting.

Just a correction to Comment #245; yes there are prions in yeast but they have been found to be non-pathogenic in humans (meaning they do not cause disease.) The prions that people have to be concerned about all come from mammals.

Just a few comments about the bread making process.
I have not actually made the exact recipe as written here but have made some very similar to it.

As for getting a consistent rise – I heat my oven to 90 deg. (about 15 sec.) and place the dough in it. No drafts or temp fluctuations to spoil rise.

Sugar – most sugar is consumed by the yeast so u are not eating raw sugar. Also, I substitute brown sugar (light or dark) for some or all the recommended sugar. Also use some molasses or honey as a substitute. Each will impart its own flavor and color on the finished product.

I also use at least half whole grain flour in the loaves I bake.

You can also get mini loaf pans and have several small loaves instead of 2 or 3 three larger loaves. These do not take as long to bake.

The recipes I use will produce at least 2 and sometimes 4 loaves of regular sized loaf pans.

Preheat your oven at least 20 minutes before placing loaves in to bake, will produce a uniformly baked loaf consistently.

For a real treat, google a recipe for a Hawaiian sweet bread, you will be glad you did.

Some of these tips I found on the web and some learned from trial and error. If you don’t try anything else, use the oven to do the rise, works every time.

I tried making this bread and added rosemary to it. It was just awesome My friend Sophia came over and said that she was so impressed that I made this home made loaf of bread. I really appreciate your instructions. It was much easier than I thought.

Hey, I’ve tried this twice now. Both times, my bread did not rise at all, leaving me a bunch of dense dough. I’ve tried putting the dough in the oven on its lowest setting to rise as well as the original method you posted on the warmer. Neither yielded results. What could I possibly be doing wrong?

I have also found something that helps with the time factor in making homemade bread. I usually get the hankering for homemade bread when I am sick, therefore I don’t really feel like being in the kitchen for too long. It is “Fleischman’s Rapid Rise Highly Active Yeast-All Natural” I don’t know if anyone has posted that yet, but it takes only 20 mins of prep time. I have yet to try it, but I will here shortly. Give it a try. If you are time consumed!

I really enjoyed your article. I want to make more of my own food but most articles are either boring or too complicated. I laughed a good few times during yours..so thanks for being funny about the bread making.

Alternative practice is my always goal..so thanks for helping me along. I work in alternative practices. Everything from proper food combining to emotional techniques. Anything I can do for you..shoot me an email.

I’m on a necessary gluten-free diet so I CAN’T eat regular bread. Instead I make my own at home using a bread machine. My helpful tip for everyone is that I mix up the dry ingredients (except the yeast) for many loaves at once in separate containers and refrigerate them. Whenever I want a new loaf, I just get one out a hour beforehand to allow it to warm to room temp., then add all the ingredients to the breadmachine and let it work. In about 90 minutes I have a hot loaf of bread! (Cinnamon raisin is our favorite)

Complaining about the fact that a recipe is given (on a FREE website, paid for by Trent, and not the subsciber or visitor) without regard for health problems that according to the poster occur in 5% of the people is incredibly self-centered. Of course, the language and insults showed the mindset of the poster.

I know we all have our own agendas, but come on. I have asthma, but I refused to support the so-called “clean air” bills in my home state because I believe in the right of business owners to determine the atmosphere of their own business. I vote with my feet and my pocketbook.

So, dafds, please vote by staying away from this website if you find it offensive, for certainly your comment is offensive and does not add to the discussion in any way.

Back to bread…great article, great pictures. I live at high altitude (above 6,000 ft.) and there are some adjustments to be made to bake bread here, but they are so worth the effort.

When I was a kid, my mom baked bread a lot, but did not ever make the adjustments. We had absolutely delicious bread, made with whole grain flour, which never rose higher than 2-3 inches. It was dense, nutritious and delicious! So-o-o filling!

I’m getting my new oven installed this weekend after four months without one. Can’t wait to pull my first loaf out of the new oven and to smell that aroma. Heaven!

i just produced an exact copy of what you posted. a perfect loaf of bread. i alway believed that such was the work of magic folk. since you layed the process bare for me it was the most basic, satisfying, human thing. chop wood, carry water, i guess. i am very happy, so i thank you.

The first time I made bread (about 2 months ago) I looked on the kitchenaid forums for help with kneading. The specialist recommended using the dough hook for 2 minutes on speed 2. Someone else wrote that it is really better to have it knead the dough for 4 minutes. I do it somewhere between the 2 times – when the dough looks about right. The process becomes that much quicker with the kitchenaid (and as you already have it, Trent…) b/c I can prepare the bowl and pan and still have time to clean up.

This was so helpful, i made my first loaf tonight and it turned out awesome. Th articel was very simple and the step by step instructions helped.ESPECIALLY the pictures, I reffered to those A LOT. Thanks for all your help

Outstanding! I used this page to make my first bread ever. The pictures helped me in making sure that everything was going the way it was supposed to. Visual aids are good for people with little baking experience. Like me!

I make bread quite frequently, but oddly I’ve never made plain white bread. Usually I made make soda bread, which is interesting for the fantastic simplicity of the recipe. You can add more ingredients (such as sugar), but the following can produce an excellent loaf: Flour, teaspoon of salt, teaspoon of sodium carbonate (whatever that may be called in your own part of the world), sour milk (or else add some lemon juice to fresh milk, mix, leave a while). Knead, bake. Yes, it rises :).

Hello Trent, I would just like to say that I have ventured into the bread baking world with this recipe and I feel nothing but excitement at all the different kinds of bread that I can eventually make at home ! Thanks for sharing this simple but delicious recipe.
Oh, and I love reading all your other posts too ! Could you share some other easy bread recipes that you make on a regular basis ?

I have now made six or seven loaves of bread. I do it by hand and as of yet the ritual is comforting. I find the bread stays good for days just sitting on the counter with the big bowl I use to mix it up in, upside down on top of it. this bread thing is fast becoming a fixture in my life. people(girlfriend/parents) have found out its there, and of course, eat it. I do lots of cooking so this isnt anything new/upsetting for me. they will kill for the silly bread so I just make more. I love this stuff!

@ “Frugality was actually behind my previous bread failures: I keep the house quite cool in fall and winter — about 62 degrees this week — which is too cold for bread to rise. Silly me didn’t realize that “warm” to me isn’t “warm” to yeast”

Actually, you just need to lengthen the rise for lower temps. Yeast will metabolize down to freezing.
As a rule of thumb for every 10 degrees F increase in temperature (up to 110, where the yeast starts to die), the rising time halves. So if the recipe calls for a 2 hour rise at 70F, and your house is 60F, you need to rise it for double the time (4 hours). And if you put it in your refrigerator at 40F, you need 16 hours of rise time.

Also, if you put it in the fridge you have a much longer baking window. That’s why many times I’ll mix my dough one night, than just put it in a plastic container in the fridge and take it out the enxt night for baking. It works! and you don’t need to knead it as much when you do it that way, because over time the gluten links up by itself.

This is actually one of the secrets behind Bittman’s no-knead bread recipe in the Times. Except instead of refrigerating the dough, he cuts the amount of yeast down to like 1/4 tsp from a standard 1 tsp or so, creating a 16-24 hour rise cycle at room temperature, which is very convenient for a home baker.

at high altitudes you might need either a slightly higher baking temperature or a longer bake time, depending on what kind of effect you are after. That’s because the fewer molecules of gas in the air at a lower atmospheric pressure at 7000 feet transmits convective heat less effectively (fewer gas molecules tot transmit the heat) than the greater number of molecules near sea level. Also, keep in mind that even though convective heating will be lower, infrared will be the same because it is not mediated by the air. I’d guess, try popping the temperature up 50deg F and keeping the same bake time. But really maybe you should do a google search on high altitude baking modifications to be sure.

“High altitude has its most pronounced effect on the rising time of bread. At high altitudes, the rising period is shortened. Since the development of a good flavor in bread partially depends on the length of the rising period, it is well to maintain that period. Punching the dough down twice gives time for the flavor to develop.
In addition, flours tend to be drier and thus able to absorb more liquid in high, dry climates. Therefore, less flour may be needed to make the dough the proper consistency.”

So, deflate the dough twice, or otherwise prevent it from expanding more than double in size (there are adjustable containers that would let you do this without you having to watch the dough) (never letting it rise beyond double size, which would overstretch the gluten strands and snap them) add maybe 2 or 3 tsp of water to the recipe, and maybe raise the oven temp by 20F (according to another source).

WOW! I just made this bread, and it is wonderful. My husband took one look at a slice and reached into the fridge for the Branston Pickle. If it is BP-worthy, it must be good. Thanks for the recipe. This will be made again. to be sure.

What a great recipe and step-by-step instructions. Thank you! I made my first bread yesterday and I experimented with making buns using the dough: I used a silicon large muffin pan to make six buns. The buns came out great, though, they are not quite the right size for a hamburger bun (too high, not wide enough). They will do in the meantime, but I would welcome any ideas as to how to make good hamburger buns using this dough.

Yeast: Yeast is a living organism, it grows in environments that are good for it. Using and keeping a live yeast culture growing in the fridge will make sure you never (or almost never) have to buy yeast.

Before I made any bread I checked out the Colorado websites for high altitude baking and found the answer was easy. After kneading for 10 mins and leaving the dough to rise for 1 hour, I then punched the dough down,kneaded it for a minute (or less) and left it to rise again for another hour. I even went so far as to do the same thing AGAIN, and left it to rise one more hour (3 in total) and then baked it, and the bread was PERFECT. I am now baking at least twice a week, and am so happy to have home made bread and none of the c**p that is sold in the stores here! Thank you for the recipe. And why bother with a bread machine, this is really quick, despite the time I need to leave it to rise, and each loaf comes out perfectly every single time!!

the oven on its lowest setting is too high a temperature to rise bread. You are aiming for any temperature between 70 and 90 F. Yeast starts to die above 110 deg F. Probably your first two efforts killed the yeast before it had a chance to create any significant rise in the dough.

You could try these methods:
You could just put the dough in the oven (with the oven off) and put a bowl of hot water in the oven alonside it to heat up the air. Or do the same thing, but in your microwave: put the bowl of dough in alongside a mason jar of hot water, then close the door of the microwave oven. The interior of the microwave is a small sized box and the water will heat it up to a comfortable temperature for the yeast.

In case anyone is having the same problem I was having when I posted back in July, the dough would not rise after the second kneading. I quit trying during the summer after three failed attempts. Just spoke to someone yesterday that explained to me that I was letting the dough rise too much the first time, so it had nothing left the second. I tried again today, kneaded the second time when the dough was only twice as big as it was before rising, and I now have a perfect looking loaf in the oven!
Don’t let the dough rise too much the first time. I was letting mine rise until it filled the bowl. Duh, I feel so stupid!

I thank you for this recipe. I love making handmade doughs and with the rising costs of awful store bought bread, I am planning to do much more baking.
I do a kick butt pizza crust and make it every week over buying.

Yes thank you for this, I’m doing my own everything lately – my grandma has always made her own bread, it’s absolutely amazing…I want to do this also. Plus I know her home made bread also lasts – we freeze it and use it when needed too.

Can anyone suggest a method or device to keep the dough from sticking to the quite damp cloth I use during rise for dinner rolls/buns. I’d prefer to leave the rolls to rise on the sheet I’d use for baking. Thanks

you’re welcome for the tip about the no-knead recipe! (I cover mine for the first 20′ of baking with an inverted preheated pyrex bowl, by the way–no need to buy a cast-iron dutch oven I don’t already own).

re: the bread machine, I have one I got for free on freecycle and have been using it to knead the dough, even for the “no-knead” recipe. I find that the results are even better. Since you already have one too, you could keep using it to mix and knead the dough, then use the rest of the recipe to finish.

I just use the “dough” cycle on mine and then unplug it and leave the dough in there for a day before taking it out and baking. If you don’t have a “dough” cycle, just running the thing for 10 minutes then uplugging it should work too.

The bread machine works great for mixing and kneading, particularly with wetter or “slacker” doughs such as the “no knead dough”. Plus I got it for free on Freecycle!! there are many people who bought or were given these things but don’t like to use them and are willing to give them away.

@ Erin, who asked : “If you are using a kitchenaid to prep the bread, how long do you have to knead the dough? I have tried the recipe once, and it turned out well, but I am not sure the I kneaded it long enough.”

Knead the dough until it sticks together strongly and elastically in a ball and the surface of the dough ball is absolutely smooth and silky looking. It takes only like 5′ in my bread machine, I am guessing the kitchenaid would have a similar time frame.

I was disgusted to find a fresh loaf of bread smelled and looked just like a leftover loaf of bread from over a fortnight! It hit me like a ton of bricks then to realize how much more of chemicals and preservatives there are in bread than nutrition and “real food” ingredients.

Then I googled “homemade bread” and found you. You are truly amazing providing accurate and detailed information that even a non-baker like me could understand, and really whip up a wonderful and nutritious loaf of bread!

I was so heartned your method did not need buying breadmakers and likes which would have discouraged me from trying otherwise.

thanks so very much for the help, i love to cook, and i make many things but i have not ventured into the realms of dough very much,, i was sorta afraid, until i read this article,, i went ahead with the plan they presented,, and i’m eating a piece of that wonderful toast as i type,,,, thanks again,,, julio a.k.a. oneoldwrench55@msn.com

I have been useing this recipe for several months now and love it. There is nothing like fresh bread and the smell in the house while it is baking and when it first comes out of the oven. It really isn’t that hard to do and very rewarding especially when your friends and family taste it. The mumbled sounds of, “Mmmm, that is GOOOOD!”, speaks volumes. I thank you and they thank you!

I just made my SECOND loaf from this recipe and the taste is wonderful. My family had it gone before it had time to cool. The only problem seems to be that IT DOESN’T RISE…. Both times it came out like a big brick. My wife and I tried a different recipe along side this one but hers used two eggs and a little more sugar but all the other ingredients were the same. What is wrong?? Again the taste was great, it was just small…

I just wanted to say thank you for posting this. I’ve always wanted to attempt making bread, but was afraid it would be a complicated project that I’d never be succesful at completing. Your post made it seem so easy, and broke everything down so well (and gave me great pics to reference). I made a loaf last week, and one today (adding the Italian seasonings) for Christmas Eve dinner tomorrow. I can’t wait to tell my guests that I have home made bread for them! Thanks again, Trent!

I searched online for the best recipe for first-time breadmaking, and yours was hands down the best, clearest, simplest, and easiest to follow – plus, with the addition of personality, opinions, and the wisdom of experience. Thanks for such a great post.

I tried making bread for the first time and I followed this recipe, and it came out great! And at the moment I’m waiting on my second loaf to rise.

Although it has been mentioned before here, I’m at altitude (~6000 ft) and when I made the recipe it came out fine, the bread simply expanded much much faster than shown in the pictures (30 minutes to double in size, and then only 30 minutes to fill the pan and form a very large ‘dome’ (3 inches high) on top of the loaf. I simply moved on to the next step as soon as it looked large enough and the bread came out great.

question,, i noticed that on some of my bread it rises out of the pan,, and also on other it is a bit crumbly,, i’m very much a novice at this,, any suggestions would be helpful,, thanks julio, a.k.a. oneoldwrench55@msn.com

In the Raleigh, NC area where I live and shop… I paid .09 cents for a strip of three yeast packets. When it goes on sale, I use a coupon that will be doubled at Harris Teeter. Also I picked a 5 lb. bag of unbleached flour at HT when on sale for .99 cents!
Your cost per loaf to make is going to be cheap when you buy the raw materials on sale and in bulk.

Thanks, Trent! Easy recipe, great instuctions. I made a loaf last night and it was superb! I can’t wait to have my sandwich today which I made with my homemade bread. Next – double batch made with the KitchenAid Mixer that has been in the closet collecting dust. Thanks again. I just discovered your site yesterday and have been gleaning information between clients all day. Great work!

Thanks for posting this great recipe. I have made it several times since stumbling across it a few weeks ago, and it’s been a winner every time. Perfect balance of ingredients, and good for a beginner baker like me.

l’m just making this bread now ..think l over did the flour a bit oops… but a question on rising it twice ???l have never made a loaf that rose very good after the second punch down..l noticed in comment 35 that it may be due to not enough salt .l;ll have to keep my eye on that and why is it, that it needs to rise twice ???? l thought it looks pretty good the first rise

I love the comment about “mindblowingly good toast”. I learned how to make bread so long ago that I don’t remember the learning process. There’s a photograph of me at the age of 4 helping my dad make bread, so that should give you a good idea of how long ago!

Anyway, I started making all of our bread for my husband and me because we had a terrible time finding a bread at our local grocery store that was high in fiber, didn’t contain HFCS, and didn’t taste “sweet” to me (I don’t like “sweet” flavors in bread I’m planning to use in a sandwich!). All the wheat breads that didn’t contain HFCS (all two of them) had cane syrup or another sweetener in sufficient amounts for me to dislike the bread.

My husband was very leery at first – he doesn’t like the way “real” bread gets slowly stale over the course of a week, making it messier to cut and use in sandwiches.

The very first morning, I converted him – he made toast to have with his eggs, and it was truly mind-blowing! He decided he could put up with slightly stale bread in his sandwiches in exchange for “that toast” in the mornings!

Comment to Pauline: Bread needs that second rising in order to have a “light” texture. If you don’t let it rise the second time, it tends to be quite dense. If you like that, then you are perfectly welcome to skip the second rising.

The bread will rise better during the second rising if you put a bit of sugar (start with a teaspoon) into the dough to help feed the yeast. It will also rise better the second time if it is still a bit “wet”. Dough should still stick to your fingers a bit – not enough to leave any behind, but enough that it doesn’t immediately release from your fingers. If you knead in too much flour at the beginning or after the first rising, the dough will be quite stiff, and will have a much harder time rising.

The lovely thing about making bread is you can play with the recipe until it comes out just the way YOU like it, rather than the way some random taste tester likes it.

My wife ask me to start making bread since I do all of the cooking. This site is great place to start, gave me the filling of knowing how to start making bread. I do make it in my bread machine, but she wants the old style bread like she had as a young girl.
Thanks for such a great site

Use honey instead of sugar and the bread stays fresh longer. I also slice the loaf with an electric knife, place in a plastic bag and freeze it. Then you can take out as many slices as you need. The slices defrost quickly and you have fresh sliced bread for whatever.

Wonderful! I just made this, and I’ll never buy store bread again. The whole experience was cathartic and wholesome, the bread tastes great, and my whole apartment smells like fresh baked bread. The bread even looked just like the pictures, which never happens. Thank you!

omfg! i made my first bread ever yesterday, and i will never go back! this morning i took a bite of stale bread crust and a bite of fresh store bought bread and there was no contest! i’m a 29 year old man and i have just found a hobby! Thank You.

Hello –
The first time I made this recipe I ended up with flat, dense bread. I googled Bread Troubleshooting and diagnosed my problem as follows:
1. Adding salt directly to the yeast liquid kills the yeast
2. Adding *hot* ingredients directly to the yeast liquid kills the yeast

I corrected this by:
1. Ensuring that the butter was *just* barely melted and not bubbling hot
2. Adding the salt after the first two cups of flour.

Voila. Anyone who is experiencing dense, flat bread may find these tips helpful.

I’ve been double batching this recipe for a few months now…awesome!
I make a plain loaf, and a cinnamon raisin loaf.
After the first rising, split the amount of dough into 2. When you have one of the doughs rolled out, sprinkle 1/4 c sugar and 2 tsp cinnamon (mixed together), and 1/2 c (or whatever you have)raisins all over the the rolled out dough. When you roll it up, however, start from only one side, and roll to the other side. When I started doing this and rolled up like Trent describes (for the plain bread)it all landed in the same glob in the bread. So play with it awhile. If you like cinnamon toast in the morning…this is awesome! ALSO…This plain or cinnamon bread make EXCELLENT French toast (eggy toast for you Brits)if you have some left a few days after baking…

Thanks so much for your tutorial. I have just gotten into maknig homemade bread and was searching for an awesome recipe and I found yours. I tried it today and it is so good….with butter and toasted! It reminds me of my favorite bread I can’t buy where I live! Thanks again! I’ll be making this all the time now and trying different variations too!

Hello Trent – I just baked my first loaf and it came out beautifully! The crust was rather hard, but inside everything was moist and yummy: thanks so much! I never managed to get my bread machine to work, but this was so easy.

To everyone who wanted to know what size bread pan to use: I used one with the following dimensions:
Length: 34 cm
Width: 12.5 cm
Volume: 1.5 l

just made a loaf. all i had was vanilla soy milk that had gone sour somehow. anyway, it worked fine, good bread! i don’t ever buy bread cuz i don’t like the taste of store bought bread but this bread is gooood. i think i’ll start making bread more often!

It sounds yummy but way too much effort and ingredients. Here’s a much easier way and while not as pretty a loaf it’s just a tasty. Steamy Kitchen’s No-Knead Bread Revisited Make it with 2 cups of regular flour and 1 cup of whole wheat and you’ve got one healthy loaf of bread.

I am a 67 year old great grandmother who has been making bread for over 40 years. I love to make it from scratch and my family has enjoyed it all of these years. Holidays i am always asked to make the rolls. I want to commend you on your very easy to understand directions, the photos are great also. good job!

I tried this out yesterday and it turned out great. My first ever baking effort of any kind. Thank you so much for the recipe. I was always afraid of the kneading process, but it wasn’t that difficult, a little patience is all what it takes, I think :)

Thanks a lot for the recipe. You should definitely do more of these :)

I just tried this, and it is wonderful. Gonna toast some for grilled burgers. Beautiful. My only issue was that the top turned out a little tougher than expected, but that’s my oven. A little adjustment on the baking time on my part will make this absolutely perfect.

So thankful that this was the first I came across for my first time making my own bread. Looking forward to using a little of it in the morning for a french toast breakfast. Mmmm… I can almost taste it!

This is a decent recipe, very tasty. I put in three teaspoons of yeast to guarantee a rise.you can buy yeast and flour from costco or another bulk food store, will get a very large block of yeast for $4.00 and flour for around $7.00. 100 loaves for 11 dollars. Its much more economical that way.

Made bread using this recipe twice now, and it’s wonderful. Love the flavor and texture. I’ve even converted my husband, who usually refuses to eat bread of any kind. Thanks for de-mystifying the bread-making process for baking n00bs like me.

Thanks so much for this post — which is still active from its start November 2007!! Wow. I am currently waiting on the second loaf to bake – we loved the first and are trying one of the variations. Our 12 year old made the bread and is so proud of herself PLUS it was delicious!!! We had it with crockpot beef pulled apart and placed over the bread as an open faced beef sandwich. oh my!!

Not impressed–Still seems Terribly time-consuming; give me the preservatives: I don’t eat that much bread, Anyway; AND, besides–that’s an awful lot of work for a relatively unimpressive return. Did the homemade bread occasionally with my mom when I was a kid–Tastes Awesome; a nice Occasional treat.

I’ve had this post bookmarked for a few months now, ever since I started reading Simple Dollar a few times a day, but I just today made a loaf. I’ve never made any bread other than pumpkin bread and banana bread, which are nothing like this.

It was super-easy, but I think my bread could’ve used a little more rising. After reading some of the comments, I could’ve killed some of the yeast with the hot butter, or I could try some of the hot water in the oven tricks others have posted here. I will try those next time.

Thanks, Trent, for the recipe and for helping people like me figure out ways to be more frugal and healthy.

Try this! VERY CHEAP and SIMPLE! Real French-style!
Needs only water, flour, salt and yeast.
–Proof 1 pack yeast in 1/2 c warm water.
–Add 3/4 c bread flour (all purpose kinda ok)
–Mix with wooden spoon until ya see little strings. (about 2 minutes.) Cover with plastic wrap and let triple in volume.(from 30 mins to 14 hours depending on temperature. colder=slower. longer=more tasty
–Add about 2 c water and 4 1/2 c bread flour. Mix until doughy then add 1 tablespoon salt. Keep mixing until dough cleans side of bowl then dump on floured surface and knead the dough for about ten minutes or until smooth,elastic and a little sticky(but without sticking to your fingers). Add flour or water as needed to get the right consistency.
–put the doughball in an oiled bowl and cover. Let rise to three times as big.
–now split the dough into two big loaves or 4 baguettes. easy to make the loaf. just roll a big “worm” with your hands. score the loaf with the sharpest blade you have.
–place the loaves on an oiled, inverted cookie sheet. cover with paper towels completely and spray the towels with water until very moist. let the loaves triple in volume and keep the towels moist while your bread rises.
–meanwhile preheat the oven to 455 or whatever. just make it hot and watch your bread while it cooks. spray some water in the oven 1 minute before the bread goes in. occasionally you can mist the top of the bread in the oven to help it get brown and crusty. when its golden brown and/or you thump the bottom and it sounds hollow its cooked already! place on racks or something where air can flow all around the loaves to cool completely. This really is easy and it doesn’t get any cheaper. Just remember water+yeast+flour+salt+nothing else=Real French Bread. My way is not the only way or best. I won’t do it this way forever I suppose. Make it my way and/or/then make it better. and then tell me so i can make it better. I live in Honolulu,HI and this makes about 20 baguettes or 10 Big Fat French loaves from one 5 pound bag of flour. Buy yeast in bulk. OR if you really want to be frugal and make delicious bread learn about wild yeast bread and sourdough starters. i would tell these secrets but i’m still experimenting myself. Sorry this is so long. I’m very much into making bread and stretching my money. Thanks. good luck. BTW kids love bread.

Great article and discussion.I’ve made the no-knead recipe since it was first published, and have adapted it for sourdough, which makes an incredible artisan loaf. I double the recipe for a large loaf, which lasts our family of 3 for most of the week. We store it with the cut side down on the breadboard. After the first couple of days it’s best toasted. Really, the keeping quality is not an issue because it gets eaten before it can go off. I’ve also made smaller loaves and frozen them with no loss of quality. The work involved is minimal – really, the hardest part is planning ahead, because you need to start it the day before you want to bake. As for adequate warmth, I use the top of the ‘fridge for rising. In general, I’ve found this method to be very forgiving, and delicious.

I tried your bread and your pizza. Mind you I am anything but a kitchen pro but your describtions are great and my wife and kids were so surprised they did not know what to say.
My son said this is the best pizza he ever eat. The leftovers were gone within a day.
Thanks for a great website and making it a special birthday for my wife.

Thanks heaps for such detailed instructions. I’m switching to cooking most meals from scratch due to the ever increasing cost of groceries. I’m fed up with commercial bread. It’s too expensive. In Australia supermarket bread is as cheap as $1.09 per loaf but the slices are so small I often have to fish them out of the toaster and the cheap loaves grow mould or go stale within a couple of days anyway. The ‘better’ bread costs in excess of $3 per loaf! I just can’t afford bought bread anymore.

Yes, it IS more effort (and time) than buying
bread, but that is part of the experience. It is
better bread, and part of the good taste, I think,
is that I MADE it. And no preservatives are needed.
I’m single, and make two loaves, and it STILL
doesn’t last long enough for mold to find it, LoL.
If it’s a bit dry at the end, I just toast it,
and it’s, yes, still ‘mindblowingly’ good.
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm….bread…….

I have been making bread since Amy Dacyczyn of “The Tightwad Gazette” said that a simple meal can be a great meal if served with home bread. There is an easy no knead whole wheat bread in the “More For Less Cookbook” by Doris Jansen Longacre. I recommend both of these resources for anyone pursuing a simple life. The first not just a collection of cost saving ideas but an inspiration to use what materials and skills you have to stop buying so much crap. The second is a Mennonite collection of simple but nutritious recipies of from around the world. The focus of the book is that if Americans eat so much, especially meats, it takes away from those who are truely starving.

Once you’ve begun making homemade bread, you won’t want to stop. It’s beautiful accomplishment. I’m now dabbling in homemade bread using oatmeal, flax meal, wheat germ and wholewheat flour. Of course, to get the right texture I’ve had to incorporate white flour as well. Still I consider my bread to be much healthier than the stuff we buy in the grocery store. Once I run out of yeast I’ll take it to the next stage – sourdough bread! Thanks for the clear demos Trent.

I can remember way back as a boy growing up on the farm that EVERY Saturday night was homemade baked beans and homemade bread. Gooooooooood!!!
We were 10 kids with hungry stomachs and enjoyed every morsel.
Mom used to bake appoximately 10-12 loaves and also 3 to 4 pans of dinner rolls. And every Saturday when we ate this,I thought I died and was in Hog Heaven…..LOL.
I want to share with you a little secret that Mom did during the week with the rest of the bread. We didn’t have toasters back then, so Mom would take and slice the bread in 1″ thick slices an lightly butter or margarine the slices and toast them in a (black cast iron) skillet.
If you thought that the bread was only good when it was served on Saturday night, your wrong.
This is a True meaning to toasted bread!!!!!!!
Well, Slice, toast, and Enjoy. Bon Apetet……

I tried you bread recipe and added the Italian spices for dinner last night, Loved it

I added a good palms worth of mixed Italian spices. Substituted the garlic salt for 1/2 tsp salt and 1tsp of garlic powder. I also added a clove of fresh minced garlic. I misread the butter amount and ended up adding 1/4 cup!

Still in all, it turned out beautifully and the flavor and smell was/is to die for!! The extra butter made it a moist bread.

Not to step on any toes and sorry if i do but… After reading 80% of the comments I also wanted to add a couple of hints to help the beginner.

When you have a recipe for bread, you have to remember that just because it calls for 6-7 cups of flour, your batch may require more or less flour because of way humidity affects flour. It differs from home to home and area to area.

When you add your “Warm” ingredients.. remember…to dissolve the yeast in 80-90 degree water and add your sugar…this gives it the warmth and food needed to become active without killing the yeast. Stir and mash out any lumps so you have a smooth liquid yeast base.

Measure out the first part of flour (usually 1-2 cups), put it in a large bowl making a well or deep dent in the middle for adding your “Warm” liquid (115-125 degrees)…. once you have a smooth slurry or liquid flour mixture then you can add the yeast base… the temp of the slurry will have decreased enough (because of the flour)to allow your yeast to continue to grow.

Now you can start adding the rest of the flour 1/4 cup at a time. Once you have a good dough ball, one that is slightly sticky and well formed, lightly flour the counter top and dump your dough on it. As you knead the dough you can feel whether you need more flour…

To Knead Dough…Flatten the dough ball then start pushing it down and away from you, lift the furthest edge and fold back, turn the dough a half turn and repeat the process…adding a little more flour to the dough as you go..keep the counter lightly floured…the dough will start to come off the counter easier and be just the tiniest bit sticky it will also have a silky soft feel as you knead it…That is when you know it is ready to be put back in the bowl to rise..

To Rise the dough (which is actually going to double in size)
You can (as this recipe states flour the bowl or you can oil, grease or spray the bowl.
If you grease, oil, or spray your bowl … put the dough ball in the bowl to grease the bottom of the ball then turn the ball over to grease the top….(this keeps the top from drying out), Cover loosely with a light dish/hand towel and let rise for an hour at least…it is ready when you can gently push your fingertip into the outer layer and leave a dent.

Punch it down..turn out on the floured counter, knead it gently & roll it out as directed and then tightly roll it up to shape and place in the pan(s)to rise another hour.

What you are doing when you roll it out is bursting the large bubbles that formed when it rose, this prevents those big holes in your finished bread slices. Rolling it tightly prevents one long hole from forming in the middle of your finished bread. Which i have had a time or two myself.

For Soft Crust… once it is baked, immediately remove it from the pan, brush the top and sides with either butter, margarine or whatever you prefer then cover it with your dish towel and let it sit awhile. It will dimple on top a bit when it softens. Once it is nice and warm place and seal in a plastic bag. (I use the bags for fresh veggies you get at the market)

For a crustier crust, immediately remove it from the pan and allow it to air cool uncovered then place in a paper sack and roll the end closed.

Reporting back on the no-knead bread from the New York Times. It was a wonderful round loaf, with a great crispy crust, and a nice flavor.

My one problem with it is the timing: you combine the ingredients, cover with plastic wrap, and leave it in a warm draft-free place to rise (I took people’s tip and put it in the oven with a bowl of warm water next to it) for 18 hours. Then after it’s risen for almost a full day, you take it out, fold and tuck it a bit (also known as… kneading), then leave it to rise another 2 hours, then you bake it. I don’t have a problem with the 18 hours, it’s making the 2 hours thing work.

Let’s say you work outside the home (like many of us do; otherwise we’d be doing the kneading version of bread), get home by 6, pull out your dough immediately instead of futzing around a bit first, knead it and put aside. So earliest you could put it in the oven is 8 pm, for an eating time of between 8:30 and 9 pm. Other option: time it so that the 18 hours is finished in the morning, give yourself an extra 5 minutes to knead and put to rise a second time, then bake at night. I don’t know what would happen if instead of letting it do a 2nd rise for 2 hours you went for 10 hours (while you’re at work).

Ok, back with my results from the above recipe. All I have to say is: woohoo, Trent you’re a genius! I got my first Thumb’s Up From Papi on this one. He said it was… wait for it… “not bad” and “good enough to compete with some storebought bread”. I know, the effusiveness took my breath away. Considering how much he hates most homemade bread though, that’s pretty strong positivity! Plus it is perfectly sized for sandwiches and toast (I used the recipe above for 2 foil loaf pans, each one was a perfect laof). Anyway, this recipe works and works well. I’m very happy with it.

I use a kitchenaid which cost $200 but I can make a loaf of good wheat bread for well under a dollar and I was paying $3 a loaf before for packaged wheat bread. I now have it down to where I can make the dough and do all the clean up in 15 minutes. The bread I’m making tastes much much better than store bought and has no preservatives. If you let it cool completely and store it in a plastic bag it will last for several days but it does start to get dry after 6 or 7 days. I use the recipe from the King Arthur wheat flour package except I use 3/4 wheat and 1/4 while flour. We haven’t bought bread from the store in over a year.

My 3-year-old daughter and I use this recipe. We cheat a bit because we use our KitchenAid mixer with a dough hook to do most of the mixing. However, she likes to do the kneading part by hand. This recipe makes delicious bread. Baking is a very nice experience to share with children, and it teaches them some good skills such as measuring and following directions.

My 3-year-old daughter and I use this recipe. We cheat a bit because we use our KitchenAid mixer with a dough hook to do most of the mixing. However, she likes to do the kneading part by hand. This recipe makes delicious bread. Baking is a very nice experience to share with children, and it teaches them some good skills such as measuring and following directions.

I created a mold to make a large cast-iron baking pan/trough and poured it. Works very nicely and can fit easily 3 large loaves.

i have never baked bread before, but now i have no choice but to learn. I can’t stand the supermarket food all made with buckets of enzymes and other processed chemicals. yuck!! your instructions look easy. i have to give it a try! thank you.

butter an milk will make your bread stale rapidly all you need is flour salt sugar honey is good to wont stale use olive oil wont stale an add tablespoon or so of lemon or lime juice bottled is fine for preservative will last over a week on rack under glass cut the cut part wont even hardly stale.totally fresh for at least a week with no special storage just keep the mice away.Its what your putting in thats going bad.Olive oil an honey dont go bad and the lemon or lime juice add to preserve and help with fermentation an the glutton mixing thingy.Hi Sweetie

anything that you would feel comfortable eating after sitting out a few days like nuts honey olive oil dried fruit will be fine.you wouldn’t leave eggs or milk or butter sitting out an want to eat it.Thats why your bread goes bad its what you put in it.You wouldn’t bake a cup of milk with butter an maybe an egg an leave it on the counter for a couple of days an grab it for snack food right.But you can leave flour an salt an honey an olive oil out an not think a thing of it good to go.

My husband usually raises an eyebrow in curiousity, maybe dread, when I try to bake something. But this is the first time, he sampled the bread with coaxing and he LOVED it. Thanks for helping me be super wife.

I have a question. Does the flour have to be unbleached? I’m asking cause I just bought a sack of bleached “enriched, pre-sfited” all-purpose flour (Robinhood brand) to make cookies, and now I want to make bread.

The bread-making recipe and method in “Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day” has fewer ingredients and is simpler. But the bottom line message here is that homemade bread is delicious, inexpensive, and easy (or at least not difficult) and well within everybody’s grasp.

I am a first time break maker and this recipe helped me out tremendously. Thanks a lot Trent! I’ve kicked it up a notch by making the whole loaf a giant pepperoni / cheese roll. Comes out just like a loaf of bread and delicious.

I don’t know if the question was answered, but one suggestion to keep your bread soft a few days later is to coat the outside of your loaf with butter while it’s still hot.. Hope this helps.

I just found this recipe on google. I am out of bread and my truck’s in the shop so I can’t get to the store, so I wanted to see how involved making my own would be. After checking a couple of sites and getting discouraged, I found this site. I am a pretty accomplished cook and baker, but have never made bread or used yeast. I tried doing something with yeast like 15-20 years ago and it was a disaster and I’ve been afraid of it ever since.

Well, I just took my very first loaf of homemade bread out of the oven. ITS DELICIOUS!! I couldn’t wait for it to cool before I had to slice into it and butter a piece.

I don’t have a loaf pan, but as soon as I am mobile again I will be getting one!

Thank you so much for the very informative article. I would have never tried it if I hadn’t seen it laid out the way you did. Thank you!~

hi,
since moving from Australia to another country, it has been hard getting friends and adapting to the heat,so i took up cooking as a distraction from missing my old friends. i have made bread before using this recipe because i love cooking. i just made it today and a beautiful smell lit my apartment and the golden brown bread was delicious. well since im only 11 years old i cant open a cafe but if i could homemade bread would definately be used. i love this recipe and i only use this one cause it can always be relied on!! thanks for posting this!!

Hi! Thank you for this simple recipe. I made it yesterday and it turned out very delicious! Thank you. I think it makes for a perfect Sunday breakfast bread. Also, it’s great bread for french toast, the day after. Lovely texture, nice natural color and very wholesome.

Thank you SO much for this recipe. Can you please put this on “instructables.com”? Last night I spent a couple of hours looking for a good, simple bread recipe. I looked at 5 on Instructables, then I found yours. This afternoon, when I was ready to make bread, I spent an hour and a half looking on Instructables for that really simple recipe, before I finally remembered it was on Google-X. If you had cross-posted this on Instructables, you would have saved me an hour and a half.

Thanks a lot. amazed at your description. Havent gone thru your website yet for other articles. Please keep writing about all your experiences especially cooking. Good work and very helpful. Will try to make the bread.

If we hv the kitchen aid, what part should we skip and start from where…it would be helpful if you could add that line.

hi!!!
thanks for the tips you shared to me. I really appreciate it…by the way I’m a student here in Philippines a third year high school. we are gooing to have our practicum on how to make a bread, so thanks for you tips it help me a lot…

I used to make bread with my mum when I was younger. Now I cook mostly Indian food, and have been making chapati’s for years. I tried this recipe and loved it. To keep any baked good longer use dry milk in your recipe, I don’t know why, but it really helps.

I’m reading a lot of only butter, margarine is bad….I’m lactose intolerant, even a little butter kills, I normally use olive oli, but sometimes use margarine. As it is Margarine is much healthier for me than butter, keeps me out of the hospital at least, so don’t over generalize!!!!

This is a great recipe! tried it with both bread flour and all-purpose flour. Both came out really well. I also used different amounts of water for the yeast, from 1 cup to 2 cups, it doesn’t seem to affect the bread outcome as far as I can tell.

Oh my goodness – I finally made a loaf of bread and not a brick. Each time I tried making with a different receipe it was either too hard, too salty, too sweet or just like a plain ole brick. I only had bread flour and checked the ingredients with all purpose flour – they both had the same engredients. Yummy – thanks so much!

Bread machines are a lot cheaper than those mixers. We picked up one used for $15, and new ones are usually $100 or less. You can make the bread in a different container after making the dough with the bread machine. You can also set up a timer, and have the bread ready right when you get up in the morning for toast, or when you get home for dinner.

after reading. I went to the store and purchased what I neded. First loaf I made was last night and we made pb&j then toast with butter inthe morning. I’m waiting for my second loaf to cool right now. The kids wanted pb&j again. I dont think we will be eating the store bought loaf thats on the counter. Thanks for the encouragement.

Hey, I am trying the recipe right now actually…im in the part where you knead the dough then cover for 1hr. I am so very excited. haha My husband made me buy a loaf of bread from the market just in case I don’t have the baking knack haha. But, it’s all good…I think it is going to be a fun experience.

My 8 year old son, 4 year old daughter and 20 month old all help me bake bread and cook from scratch. Most kids in our upper middle class neighborhood dont do a single chore let alone cook or help out in anyway! Even our toddler loves to pound the bread its really fun family time if you make it fun and helpful to your family. We do buy store bought bread but are trying to be more frugal and simplify by choice and not wait like some when its a necessity. I think cooking together instills good family values, cheaper, healthier and a free so to speak activity with some simple math to it and like science as well for the little ones outside of school lessons.

This is a brilliant tutorial on how to make bread. And check out that list of additives! Nasty stuff. I like knowing that my bread is ‘real’, and only has in it what I put there for the flavour. It’s so tasty we don’t need a long shelf-life for bread at our place! Anything that does linger in the bread box goes in the compost bin, and most of the bulk packaging (like the flour, salt etc) can be recycled, so it’s good to know it’s not only healthy for us but good for the planet.

I’ve been making bread fora couple of years now. Actually becoming pseudo famous for it in town (small town). I used to work in a restaurant and the that did a booth at the fair this year. They paid me 500$ to use my recipe, for this year only. If they want to use it again next year they will have to pay again. Based on this year’s success I they may want to purchase permanently. The cost is less than .50$/loaf and sells for 5$. I give it as gifts and sell extra in my spare time.

Your post mentions the lower cost of bread-making four or five times, but you don’t explain how making your own bread is cheaper. As someone who cooks often, I don’t disagree with the other benefits, and common sense tells me making bread is cheaper than buying bread but this article breaks the cost down and makes a pretty convincing argument that making your own bread is only a little bit cheaper.

“I suppose, given your willingness to work harder and make more of the components [including making your own yeast, which even you don’t do in this post], bread CAN be cheaper than store bought. But just barely. It’s pretty damned hard to compete at home with the giant production line and enormous buying power of a large bakery.”

I made my first loaf of bread using the recipe and blew it. I did everything to a tee and everything was going great until I put it in to be baked. Within 15 minutes of baking at 400 F, I had a black loaf of bread – pretty uniform on all sides and bottom. Has anyone else done this? I am going to try to find out exactly what temperature my oven is backing when I set it at 400 F.

I am a little disappointed because I don’t usually cook anything and was very excited when the dough raised and everything was going to plan.

A quick question for Trent. Under ingredients you said, “Corn starch or nonstick cooking spray (just to prevent the bread from sticking to the bowl or pan)” then you said in the steps, “Then spray the bread pan down with nonstick cooking spray (or coat it with cornmeal)…” I’m not meaning to be nit-picky, but since I’m a newb here, I need to be certain which one you meant or if you meant either one. Can you clarify?

I have really enjoyed learning and listening to the various tips and tricks in bread making. My question is: Is it possible to make a loaf of bread with the consistency of store bought bread? The reason I am asking is my read is very hard!

Just a follow up. I checked the temperature of my oven with an oven thermometer and discovered that no matter what temperature I set it at the temperature just kept climbing off the thermometer scale > 600F. I ordered a thermostat and plan on installing it myself. Now that’s dedication to cook this loaf of bread using your recipe.

I have made the bread a couple of times before with no problem, but the last two times it didn’t rise in the bowl, the pan or the oven. What could I be doing wrong? I used King Arthur flour on the others before, but I used the Pillsbury all purpose flour the last two times. It so frustrating because I miss my bread. Help!!!!!!
Thanx.

Hello
First, I’m French so I may be doing mistakes while writing this commentary.
I’ve read quite a few posts on your blog and I really think it’s quite fascinating and your ideas are great. However I just found your article on baking homemade bread and I think this is really a strange idea to give a list of ingredients with butter, milk and sugar ! Flour, leavening, water and salt are really the only necessary ingredients for bread, and that’s much healthier in my opinion than eating sugar and fat every time you eat bread! Anyway, thank you for encouraging people to cook their own food, that’s really something that can improve people’s lives!

Hi, Aurelie!
I agree that flour, water, yeast, and salt are sufficient to make a good loaf of bread–that’s how I make my sourdough and poolish baguettes and lots of other breads.

However, the world of bread is much bigger than just those four ingredients. You’re French, so you’re probably familiar with pan de mie and brioche and plent of other enriched breads. France has as many of those as any other country.

The upside is a different flavor, plus greatly extended shelf life, plus some nutritional benefits. The downside is some fat and sugar, which can be held in check if you don’t gobble up tons of bread, no?

Variety is one of the reasons I like to bake my own breads, so let’s not get too parochial about what belongs in it, shall we?

I would suggest not using the Pam. Look at that container – non-recyclable. What a waste every time one is throw away.

You can simply use butter or margarine instead. Our Moms and Grandmoms used to save the wrappers from sticks of those to rub over pans to “grease” them, thus even better, using up stuff that would be thrown away.

To start, I give this recipe five stars. I have made it probably a dozen times since discovering it and is highly recommended.

However, I have recently experimented a little more with this recipe by adding a small amount of olive oil and some italian seasoning. If you do it right, this (in my opinion) makes the bread all the more delicious, although you are sacrificing the health component that was earlier discussed. I suggest giving this version a try sometime and hopefully noticing a tasty flavor variation, as unorthodox as this idea may sound.

I am super excited about trying this out. I have never made my own bread before. I recently started making my own muffins because I am trying to save money, and they were SO much better than store bought. Can’t wait!!

I think this is an AWESOME recipe. I added some garlic to it and when I cooked the dough it came out wonderful. I had some problems proofing the dough. I think it was to cold in my house, I did find this nifty little proofer and now I use it for proofing my dough. Are there any other suggestions or variations of this recipe you would suggest?

I tried making bread from this recipe for the first time this weekend and it turned out great! I was nervous because I thought bread-making would be really hard, but the steps laid it out clearly and I had no problems. I thought I might have problems when I mixed the flour in and the dough was flaky, but commonsense just told me to add more milk until the dough was the right consistency, and that worked. I let the dough sit out on our porch in the 80-degree heat for 1 hr each time, and it worked perfectly. It only took 15 minutes at 400 degrees to bake the bread. The bread came out fluffy and moist and so delish. I am hooked! I can’t wait to experiment with other flavors. I am also going to try to make this lactose-free for my husband. Thanks for the great instructions!

Please understand that I don’t bake — ever! However, this looked so easy that I tried these instructions yesterday and the bread came out beautifully! I even used three teaspoons of sugar instead of five, and substituted confectionary sugar for regular sugar.

Thansk for taking the time to post this. Now I’m on the hunt for other bread receipes!

I read this recipe and wondered about the lack of liquid with the amount of flour…….I have to say it certainly was not a good mix……..I needed to add more milk……..My opinion is this is a awful bread recipe……..

TO KEEP BREAD FRESH LONGER…
I’ve only used the following trick when I make artisan (read no-knead) bread.

Add one teaspoon white vinegar to the dough. If you’re stickler about exact hydration, remove one teaspoon of water before adding vinegar. Also, after the bread has cooled, wrap it in foil. It will stay fresh for several days.

Another trick…after you place the dough in the oven, give it a quick spray of white vinegar. Half way through the baking process, give it another spray. I don’t know if this has anything to do with making the bread last longer, but it does produce a nice soft but toothsome crust. Again, I’ve only done this with artisan bread.

Well I just love the pics. I am a visual learner. I will be making bread with my daughter for a school project and have never done this so I really appreciate this illustrated recipe.
I BELIEVE we can do this :)

Hmm, I would think mixing the bread ingredients would be tough to do if you’re just using an ordinary spoon. I have an electric hand mixer and not sure if once the ingredients mix the dough would be really thick or something. I don’t mind kneading though. Good post – I’ve been wanting to bake my own bread for quite some time. We buy a healthy brand of bread and even then I’m sure there’s ingredients that aren’t good for you. I’d really want to do a whole wheat loaf with whole wheat flour for sure. Perhaps I should invest in a breadmaker.

I just want you to know this is the best recipe I’ve ever tried, love the texture and the taste is better than good, Thank you I am 84 and use to make bread all the time until I became a widow. I wanted some good bread and I found it! Thanks again. Jackie B Green 9/22/2010
TEXAS

I love this recipe! I’ve been using it for about a year, and the bread comes out perfectly every time. It doesn’t last 24 hours in my house! I will use Olivia’s suggestion about using it for cinnamon raisin bread. Yum!

I’ve started making bread because we now live on a fixed income. I use a bread maker, but I may try this on my own. The bread maker is so so easy. And I can really stretch my dollars. Going back to the basics is becoming fun. I have decided not to work anymore and stretch my dollars. Who needs all that junk in the world?

I totally suck at making bread, but I tried your recipe and it came out amazing! I used to make bread in the bread machine, but it never mixed it enough or cooked right for some reason. I was surprised that the loaf will keep for just over a week too (assuming it lasts that long ;) ) much longer than the bread outta the machine! I luv your site, you make everything so easy to follow!

Nice read, I just passed this onto a friend who was doing some research on that. And he just bought me lunch since I found it for him smile So let me rephrase that Thank you for lunch! Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship. by Harry S Truman. gfefbdgbkkee

Wow that was odd. I just wrote an extremely long comment but after I clicked submit my comment didn’t show up. Grrrr well I’m not writing all that over again. Anyway, just wanted to say superb blog! efkkaekegkcg